Xover: Chronicles of the outer colonies
by tobiisagoodboy94
Summary: Halo/Mass Effect/Killzone: The Outer colonies were the first to suffer from the Covenant crusade, hundreds of planets burned and billions died, but some founded save havens in remote part of the UNSC space. Both Vekta and Helghan builded their own small empires and when they, together with Earth, find giant artifacts of unknown origin, a whole new world opens for them.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

In the year 2532 the UNSC believed that they had lost Vekta, a small world in the outer colonies, due to an Covenant attack, but this was only half true, since something happend during the attack nobody had expected.

A single Covenant destroyer attacked the system and was about to glass the planet, , it had already enterd the planets atmosphere, when suddenly 6 slipspace ruptures opend, through which an equal number of human ships appeared.

They were smaller than the aliens ships and of human design, 6 old Gorgon-class destoryers, the last warships under the command of the Colonial Military Administration.

Those ships had been meant to be scrapped and taken out of service, but now those old ships would get their chance for glory, to at least restore a little of the CMAs lost honor.

The Covenant ship was commanded by a rogue Shipmaster, who had disobeyed the Fleetmasters orders and left the fleet to seek his own private glory.

But the rogue shipmaster and his crew wouldn't find fame or glory, all they got were 6 MAC-rounds, 4 beeing stopped by the destroyers shields, before the 5th and 6th teared giant holes into the ship.

The finishing blow was delieverd by hunderds of Archer Missiles, which turned the destoryer into a giant inferno, before it crushed onto the planets surface.

Vekta had been saved by a miracle.

2532 : After destroying the Covenant ship, the CMA destroyers decide to stay in the system, to protect the planet.

Reports of the destruction of Vekta are faked to make both the UNSC and the Covenant lose interest in this small community.

Their are supported by the sorry remains of the CMA, the few backwater stations left in colonial hands support the defected ships so that they wouldn't run out of supplies.

2533:

CMA commanders and civilian represantants decide to send out all civilian ships with Slipspace-drives they have, to save the refugees that are still stranded within the Outer colonies.

2533-43:

Over 300 million people are brought to Vekta, the colonies large agricaltural production allowed them to at least satisfy the basic needs of the people.

Basic industrial production is established with the little money CMA can still provide, while the survival of Vekta is still kept secret to the UNSC.

2545-2549:

Contact is made with several other surviving colonies, who were abondand by the UNSC after the death of Admiral Cole and the following complete retreat into the Inner Colonies.

2549 the ten surviving systems form an alliance to protect themself against possible future threats.

The few remains of the CMA completly leave the UNSC, which doesn't even notice, and join the independent colonies.

Scientist from the other worlds start to explore to wreckage of the Covenant destroyer, after it had been abondand for tat least 15 years.

2553 :

The search for refugees from the Outer colonies ends, while Vektan population has reached over 500 Millions.

Together with the other surviving colonies the Independant colonies have a population of around a billion people.

The building of the Vektsa Shippingyards has begun, a large shipyard which is meant to start an independent ship production, to increase the trade between the colonies.

Its on the planet since the colonies lack the technology to build space yards.

2553:

The independant colonies form the ISA, the Intersolar Strategic Alliance, a defensive and political alliance, which leaves much political independace for the single worlds.

Arcadia Shippingyards are finished and the building of new civilian ships starts.

Strong debattes start over the question if the ISA should form an own military and if new warships should be build.

Since 2550, when the last of the old destroyers had been put out of order, the colonies had no space defense and nothing but militias.

2553:

The first new ISA cruisers is put into service, the ship is built with both UNSC and Covenant technologie, the ships even posses energy weapons, but energy shielding is still not completly finished.

2555:

Contact is made with the surviving colony of Helghan.

Helghan was originally not more than an mining world, colonised by the Helghast Cooperation, a private mining cooperation.

During the war, the Helghast cooperation evacuated most of their people and millions of colonists to Helghan, since the partly poisionous planet was never discoverd by the Covenant.

The poisionous nature of the planet forces the people to life in bad conditions, while the corrupt Administration lives in luxury.

In 2552, a man known as Scolar Visari lead a Coup de etat against the administration, after which he established a fashistic regime known as the Helghast Empire.

He greatly militariced the Helghan society and used the growing economy to build a large army and fleet.

Shortly after both the ISA and the Helghast make contact, war errupts, since Visari seeks conquest.

2555-2560

The Helghast Empire sucessesfully conquer several colonies, which are only poorly defended, until the ISA is able to muster enough troops for an counteroffensive.

The new cruisers prove to be superior to the Helghast ships, which are relativly primative.

The ISA is able to get the upper hand in space combat, but the poorly equipped and also fanatic and well drilled Helghast soldiers prove to be a hard opponent for the unexperienced ISA Marines.

Both sides take heavy looses until all occupied colonies are freed again.

2561:

The long prepared assault on Helghan is completly crushed, due to the ships and weapons the Helghast suddenly developed.

The genius weapon manufrature Jorhan Stahl has supplied the Helghan Army with energy weapons and superior fighter crafts, which crush the unprepared ISA fleet.

But only shortly afterwards Stahl contacts the ISA and offers them a deal to end the war.

He and Admiral Orleck will bring down Visari and sign a peace treaty, if the ISA gives them 2 systems with several inhabitated worlds and all data on the energy shielding technology.

Hard debattes follow in the next weeks, since the ISA High Command is completly fractured over this question.

The war faction wants to end the war as fast as possible and crush the Helghast once and for all, while the Peace faction argues that an military victory would cost far too much.

Another factions argues that they should seek peace but not give the Helghast this much, since they could use it against them in another war.

Finally the decision is made to give Stahl the technology but no inhabitated worlds, they simply gave them the location of some nearby, inhabitable worlds.

Stahl agrees and finally launches the Coup against Visari, which quickly brings down the tyrannt, after Stahls personal army had crushed Visaris bodyguards.

2562:

An official peace treaty is signed between the ISA and the Helghast Dominion .

Both sides only see this as a small break to rebuild and reinforce their forces.

2565:

UNSC makes its firct contact with Vekta since 30 years, as an exploration vessel finds Vekta and shortly afterwards Helghan.

The three goverments have official meeting, but no satisfying results are achieved, since esspecially the Helghast block any possible sollutions.

2567:

After years of diplomacy, with many complications and disagreements, the Glassland-treaty is signed.

With this the UNSC accepts both the ISA and Helghast and as independent nations, who in return don't expand in the former colonies.

The Helghast enact a isolanistic policy, while the ISA and UNSC form healthy trade relations.

The reason for the UNSC to accept the idenpendent colonies is simple.

Both ISA and the Helghast are too weak to really threaten the UNSC, but too strong to simply annex, so they let them have their independace, but make sure that they would still stay weaker than Earth.

They give them 30 percent of the former outer colonies as terretory.

2570:

A joint UNSC-Helghast-ISA fleet, lead by Vice-Admiral Lasky, finds a gigantic alien relict, they call the god key.

Several tries to activate the relict, which is only slightly smaller than a Covenant supercarrier, fail until, per accident, the solution is found, in alien ruins on a nearby moon.

But not only this relict activates, several planetoids across human space break apart , releaving more god keys.

5 are located in UNSC space, 3 in ISA terretory and one directly next to Helghan.

Those god keys, now renamed mass relays, can be used for instant travel between the relicts, quickly becoming an important transportation system within human space.

2573:

A ISA cruiser gets send to an unknown relay by accident, finding itself far away from human soace.

As they try to activate the relay, several alien ships appear and attack as communication fails.

The damaged ship is able to retreat to ISA space and alerts Vekta High Command about the danger.

The ISA asks for help from both UNSC and Heghan, who mobilize their fleets to guard the relays.

The UNSC sends ships to all relays to make sure that no aliens gets through unnoticed.

12th May, 2573 ISA-colony Falos.

Falos was one of the worlds near a Mass Relay and until a few days ago, it had been a peacefull and also wealthy world, which had benefited from trade through the Relays greatly.

But now it was different, the ISA has mobiliced every ships could and now 15 Damocles-class cruisers were guarding the world, supported by several UNSC ships, mainly old Paris-class frigates, since Earth holded back its new ships to protect their own worlds.

Everybody had been shocked about new, obviously aggresive aliens who waited behind the relay and who had attacked an ISA ship for no reason.

It had been the first real threat since the war against the Helghan, since the former Covenant species were, like the Brutes, busy killing themself or like the Sangheili ocuppied with rebuilding their nations.

But now the whole fleet was mobilized and reinforcement were already on their way towards Falos.

Rear-Admiral Archer was in command for the joint defence fleet, he was an old veteran of the Helghast war and one of the few captains who had survived the failed Invasion of Helghan.

He was an calm and popular with his man, a man who would do everything to keep his man alive and who hated to take unnecassary risks.

He had divided his fleet in two groups, the first, the 6 Paris-class frigates, was directly stationed at the Relay to monitor it, while the ISA cruisers holded their position near Falos to protect the colony if needed.

"Rear-Admiral, we are getting hailed by the Azincourts captain, its an emergency signal." the communication officer sounded scared, it seemed like it was getting serious now.

"Put him through." Archer faced the video screen on which Captain D'noir, a man of Afro-american descency, the commanding officer of the UNSC flottile, appeared.

He was relaxed, typical for UNSC officers who were far to well drilled to freak out during a battle :

"Rear-Admiral we have at least 30 unknown ships who just passed through the Relay, their still out of weaon range but are approaching us with high speed. Shall we intercept them ?"

"Negative Captain, your flottile shall fall back to planet and join with my ships, we need our forces concentrated if they prove to be hostile." Archer was just as gefasst as his UNSC counterpart, but he bit his lips the moment the screen went black, since this was not what he had hoped for.

Just a few hours, thats all they had needed until the reinforcements, 20 more Damocles-class cruisers, could have arrived, but now they were outnumberd and hardly had enough ships to cover the planet.

It only took a few minutes until the frigates had reached them and they were quickly followed by the alien fleet.

"The UNSC frigates will form a second line behind our ships, they lack shields so we will have to be their cover." Archers orders were directly set in motion, as D'noirs ships took positions, just in time before the alien fleet approached them.

"Try to contact them use any known frequence and everything you can come up with." the communication officer did as he was commanded, but it soon became obvious that it had no use, since the unknown ships simply kept their course and no answer was received.

"The alien ships are emitting an unknown energy reading, I would guess that they are charging up their weapons." slight panic spread across the bridge of Archers cruiser, this first contact was about to become a war and noone knew what would happen.

The last time aliens attacked humanity, they were technologicly superior and slaughterd billions.

"Send orders to all ships. All weapons ready, charge up Bombard-lasers but only fire with Mass drivers until I order it." it would only took seconds until the aliens were in effective weapons range and nobody knew what they should do, not even Archer himself.

Should they fire first or wait until they were attacked ?

"Aliens are firing, numerous projectiles are fired from the ships." it was strange, but this words let Archer relax a litte.

Projectiles, no fancy energy weapons or lasers of doom, projectiles were something they knew well.

The attack was answerd nearly instantly, as all human ships returned fire with their secondary Mass Drivers, small coil guns from the ISA-cruisers and Onager-guns from UNSC Frigates, but the alien projectiles reached their targets first.

The shields of the cruisers blurred slightly blue as the shells hitted them, and except for two ships who were hit by at least 5 projectiles, all cruisers survived.

One Frigate also turned into a fireball, as some of the shots passed by the cruisers and hitted one of the unshielded ships behind.

Turian Dreadnaught Palavens guard

Admiral Tilius was completly concentrated on the situation, it was nothing usual to meet an unknown species and to directly get into conflict with them.

But those ships seemed to be primitive, some of them had not even barriers and although most of the alien ships withstood the first barrage, there was no doubt that this would become a easy campaign.

Shoot down some newcomers ships, then send in the Asari and let them solve the rest and everything will be fine.

3 alien ships were gone and he had to admit that those larger ships barriers were quite strong, but the next salvo would finish this battle.

"Next salvo out." his weapon officer told him and although two of their frigates had been destroyed by the enemies mass drivers, no one doubted anything.

3 more alien ships exploded under the barrage and the Turian fleet was now closing the distance between them and the aliens, to finish this with Disruptor torpedos.

Those ships seemed to be primitive and since their long range weapons were only weak compared to their own, so he was sure that it would be finished even faster once they got into knife-fight range.

"We are in range for Disruptor Torpedos in 5,4,3,2..." the turian weapons officer would never finish his countdown and Tulius would never find out that he had underrestimated those aliens.

They were only a few hundred miles away from the enemy fleet, so they had no chance to to evade the barrage that hitted the Dreadnaught.

Two, by Citadel standard gigantic, slugs hitted the ship and while the barriers could barely resist the attack, they didn't offer any resistance to what followed only a millisecond afterwards, as two bright blue beams of light hitted the ship, vaporising the Dreadnoughts bridge and burning a large hole into its mid sections.

From a few second the heavily damaged ship still floated, but then the main reactor went criticall and the whole ship turned into a large,nuclear fireball.

Captain Segetiu, commanding officer of the nearby cruiser Cesario, could only watch in shock and horror, as not only the dreadnought, but also eight other ships, both cruisers and frigates were destroyed by the enemies volley.

The cruisers could hardly withstand the massive slugs, just to get finished by the aliens secondary weapons, while the frigates were simply crushed by the massive projectile.

And what was even worse, the larger ships seemed to posses energy weapons and the kenetic barriers were simply ignored by the energy beams, which melted the metal they hitted, leaving giant holes in what ever they hitted.

One cruiser somehow survived one hit, although atmosphere leacked out of the giant hole and tried to retreat, while the frigates were simply burned away by the massive energy.

The shock only lasted for a second, Segetiu was far to well trained to stay paralysed by this unexpected turn of events.

"Open com lines to all surviving ships, disruptor torpedos on the larger ships and mass drivers on the unshielded ships in the second line." the orders were directly followed and it took only seconds until the counter-attack started and two dozens slugs and a dozen torpedos made their way towards the human fleet.

They would pay for what they had done.

Rear-Admiral Archer had been nearly euphoric for moment as the main weapons of his fleet had shot down nearly a third off the enemy ships, but now D'Noir was dead, together with his ship and all that was left of the defense fleet were 5 cuisers and a single, damaged Paris-class frigate.

Those goddam aliens had some sort of torpedo, which seemed to disort space, and those things had destroyed 6 of his cruisers, while the enemy projectiles had destroyed nearly all UNSC ships.

"Admiral, the aliens are sending drop ships, should we try to intercept them ?" everbody on the ship had until now nearly lost their nerves, the ISA fleet may be considerd well trained and equipped, but most of them had never faced such a situation in which they were pushed into the corner like this.

Those who had were dead and maybe still floating in Helghan space, but Archer was one of the few who had survived the Helghans disaster.

"Send an retreat order. All ships will fall back and form a defensiv formation near Falos moon." the whole crew knew what this order meant, they would give Falos to the aliens, at least for now.

"Evade any attacks by the enemy, we will wait for reinforcements and then win this battle." the orders were set in motion and the few remaining human ships departed from the battle, leaving the planet to the aliens.

All that could now stop them was the planets garrision.

Jesus they were lost.

Falos Capital

At least 20 percent of the colonies 50 million inhabitants lived in the Capital city of Norwal, making it a giant and growing city full of life and wealth.

But now the city was in pure chaos, people hurried through the streets, searching for save places or trying to find anything they could use to leave.

But also thousands of soldiers from the local garrison rushed through the city, getting into position to defend it as good as they could.

Most of them had no battle experience, Falos had never seen any invasion, neither by the Covenant nor the Helghast, so nobody had experience with this kind of situation.

A large river divided the city and every bridge was now guarded by at least three dozen soldiers, while the rest of the troops were scatterd across the city.

A large number protected the goverment district, while the others had taken positions across the whole urban area, guarding important streets or barracks within the area.

You could say many bad things about Falos garrison, like for example that they sold military rations and equipment on the black market, but they had mobiliced very quickly within the few hours the defending fleet had been able to give them.

But now this wasn't important, as hundreds of enemy dropships filled the sky and all AA-guns across the area opend fire.

"Where is our Airforce ?" Corporal John Bradley was in command of a five-man squad, with which he was supposed to reinforce a platoon near the central city bridge, as the hundreds of enemy dropships appeared in the sky.

Those planes didn't make much noise compared to the roaring that now filled the sky, as half a dozen ISA heavy fighterplanes flew over the small squad, engaging the dropships.

Heavy machine guns came to life and riped two enemy planes apart, until the aliens escort fighters appeared.

The ISA planes directly left their formation and engaged in dogfights with the aliens, who proved to be more agile than their human counterparts.

But this wouldn't be worth to much, since those six planes were only the vanguard of a larger force, as now the whole city was filled with roaring of large fighter engines, the engines of over 60 fighters attacking.

Dogfights, laser beams and machine gun fire now filled the air, as still hundreds of dropships made their way to the ground, unloading the troops they carried.

"Dig in soldiers." John and his squad went for cover as two dropships landed only a few dozen yards away from them, unloading at least 10 alien soldiers on nearby street.

The ISA-soldiers ducked behind some cars which were still standing on the street, and pointed got ready to face the attackers.

The aliens noticed them, slowly aprproached the small unit, ducking behind cover and slowly making their way towards their opponents and finally opend fire at them.

It took a few seconds and hundreds of enemy bullets until the human soldiers finally returned fire, but their rounds simply bounced of the aliens personal shields and this fact made the aliens now simply charge .

"Not so fast you good damm dinosaurs." a female soldier raised her head out of the cover, Private First class Sarah Fennigon, an old friend of John and armed with an battle rifle, which had a far large caliber than the Assault rifles the others were using .

She fired two burst on the nearest alien, whos already strayend barriers shatterd, while the last two bullets penetrated the chest armour and directly killed him, since his body now hitted the ground motionless.

The rest of the alien went into cover again, still firing supressive fire on the humans.

"Sarah !" the brown haired woman hadn't noticed that her comrades had already retreated a few yards away from her, so John grabbed her arm and teared her away, while the rest provided suppresion fire.

"Incoming bombing run !" was all he could screem to his old friends, before the noise of nearby engines roaring supressed any other sound.

Two heavy fighters flew over the streets, low enough to race between the buildings, while one of them dropped several small bombs over the aliens.

The shockwave of the explosion knocked John and Sarah over, so John landed on top of her and when they had finally recoverd from the explosion, Sarah asked pertly :

"John, you'll need to kiss me if you want to stay on top of me longer." everbody knew of their history, the fact that Sarah and John had been in a akward on and of relationship until Sarah had also joined military.

Since then John had permanently ended the relationship, since he didn't want to be the superior of his girlfriend.

Sarah had still not accepted this, so she teased him when ever she could.

"Not the time for this Private." John now came back on his feet, trying to ignore what Sarah had sayed.

He then screamed into his radio, telling the pilots that they should warn them earlier than next time, but the pilot only replied joking :" Just gotta keep your heads lower next time Bradley." everybody knew which pilot was flying in one of those fighter planes, Dimitry Chrustow, one of the best and also most arrogant pilots of the garrison airforce.

"Just shoot down aliens, asshole." John changed the frequence of his radio, trying to avoid the pilots mocking.

The rest of the squad was now checking on the alien soldiers, most of them had been tored apart by the bombs and the only one who was still living was already taking his last breaths, since a large shrapnel had penetrated his chest.

One of the soldiers seemed to fell pity for the alien, who was obviously in pain, so he drew his sidearm, pointed it at the aliens head and pulled the trigger.

Blue blood splashed across the body as the head was torn apart by the bullet and the alien body stopped moving.

"Lets keep on moving, the nearby barrack is attacked and asks for reinforcements, so lets get moving." John orderd and everybody got ready to depart again.

The battle had just started and they wouldn't stop until their homeplanet was save.


	2. Chapter 1

**Wow, didn't expect so many favs and follows just for one crappy chapter ^^  
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**Well heres the next since I'm currently in a writing mood.**

**Now have fun with it**

* * *

><p><span><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

**Urban Hell**

"Vakarian, come on what the hell are you doing ?" his sergeant screamed at Actius Vakarian, as he ducked behind cover, to avoid the aliens fire.

Their enemies may be primitive, not using any Mass effect tech, but they were still enough to kill a soldier is he was inattentive.

A machine gun was currently forcing him to duck behind a low wall, while the large projectiles were filling the air above him.

He grabbed his Assault rifle tightly and waited for the enemies weapon to overheat, giving him the opportunity to strike back.

One of his comrades wasn't so patient, he raised his head and tried to fire at the enemy, just to get hit by the enemies.

The first shoots were stopped by the turians barriers, but the large LMG projectiles qucikly overwhelmed them and perforated the soldier and his armor.

"Medic !" Actius heard one of his comrades screaming, but he was too focused now, altough the Sergeant was still screaming.

And then, the moment came, just a second of silence after the machine gunner had emptied his magazine, but this was enough for the turian soldier.

He raised his head and only needed an eyeslash to aim, before he fired, a short burst of three shoots, which all hitted the alien soldier, who collapsed liveless.

He obviously had no barriers and his armour hadn't offerd any resistance to his shoots.

"Go men !" the turians wouldn't waste this chance, the fact that their opponents had just lost their strongest weapon, and charged at the alien position, firing supressive fire on the aliens.

Actius squad hadn't any more looses, the aliens were shocked by the charge and didn't offer anymore resistance, so the Turians took several PoWs, four male and two female aliens.

"What are we supposed to do with them Sergeant ?" one of the soldiers asked, but his superior screamed at him annoyed :

"What do you think ? They're PoWs, we'll have to keep them safe. The media would tear the Hierachy apart if we kill unarmed prisinors. Actius, take this smart ass and two other man and guard the PoWs with them, we'll inspect the area." Actius did not argue or resist, he was a soldier of the Hierachy and would follow orders.

But his thoughts were not here at the moment, they were home, with his family.

This was supposed to be his last mission before retirement from the military, he had never liked it too much, but every Turian had to fullfill this duty.

"Don't worry Garrus .Daddy will soon be back home."

The battle in the sky over Falos capital was still brutal, neither side had been able to gain any advantages, the humans had more planes, but the Turians were more agile and had barriers on their machines, in difference to the defenders, who had nothing but some thin metal plates to protect them from laser beams.

But this wasn't something that could stop Flight Leuitanant Dimitry Chrustow , he wasn't a pilot who would care about such minor facts, he had runned out of rockets already half an hour ago, his fuel was reaching 10% and it was only a matter of seconds until his machine guns were empty, too.

But he didn't care as the 5th enemy fighter exploded right in front of him, after he had hitted its engines with a few bullets.

"Come on you alien bastards, is this all you got ?" he screamed at his opponents, while he avaded a few laser beams with ease, before he started to chase one of the poor enemy dropships that were still around.

He was just emptying his last shoots into the craft, as an annoying voice came out of his radio, a voice he knew to well.

"Chrustow, turn on your brain again and come back to the base, you have hardly any use their at the moment." it was his superior officer, an old Major and nobody he wanted to anger.

He grunted into the radio and turned his fighter, to had back to the base.

Well at least he had got his 6th kill, so it was still a good day, at least until now, since one of the aliens pilots decided that he wouldn't let Chrustow simply retreat.

"Dammit ." the ISA-pilot had now chance to loose his opponent, neither had he enough fuel to start any evasive manouvers nor any weapons left to defend himself.

It only took a second before the first laser shot hitted one of his wings, causing it to break of.

Dimitri activated the ejection seat, he knew that the fuel tanks in the wings would soon catch fire.

The cockpits glass flew away and the pilots seat was shoot into the air, nearly causing him to empty his stomach.

Dimitry had never liked those things, but he felt his heart becoming lighter as the parasuit opend and slowed down his fall.

He had ejected in low alltitude, only half a mile above the ground, so he still hitted the ground with quite some speed.

It took a few moments until Chrustow had recoverd from the hard landing, he was dizzy and his legs hurted, but he needed to act.

He had come down in an area which was overrun by aliens, which would for sure soon find him, so he searched his seat for his pistol, the normal sidearm every pilot had in case that they landed in hostile terretory.

He had always been terrible with this gun, but it was now the only thing that could stop those invaders from killing him.

"Ok Chrustow, keep calm and try not to get caught by those assholes." too bad that his radio was broken, he could have called for help otherwise, but well he could forget this option.

The pilot now headed into a nearby building complex, he needed to get away from his landing site, the aliens would for sure soon find him.

A door broke under his feet, as he forced it to open, hurrying into the inner courtyard, breaking two more doors on his way there, before jumping over a wall and finally ducking behind a car in front of him.

Crustow peeked over it, spooting 3 armed aliens, obviously guarding several captured humans, most of them soldiers, judging from their battle dress.

He checked his weapon again, just a simple pistol for which he had only 2 more magazines, hardly enough for a long fire fight.

He sneaked towards them a little more, taking a look at the soldiers, whos hands were tied together, but nothing more to restrain them.

He then spotted something, an M224 light machine gun, which was laying on a car, only a few yeet away from the aliens.

This baby would certanly have enough fire power to take out those aliens, but how could he reach it unnoticed ?

Crustows view was so focused on the LMG that he didn't notice the aliens which slowly approached from behind, the fourth guard who had patrolled the area.

Chrustow only noticed it when the barrel of a gun was pressed into his back, making him lift his hands.

Dimitry didn't knew what would happen now, would they kill him or could he survive ?

He closed his eyes and his thoughts raced through his head and he didn't even notice that the barrel in his back suddenly disappeared, until he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Dimitry you can stop wetting yourself." his hearth nearly stopped beating as he heard Johns voice and was even more shocked as he opend his eyes.

The aliens were now holding their hands up high , as the rest of squad had sneaked up on them from behind, pointing their guns on them.

"Thanks for leaving a trail of destruction for us to follow." Sarah also stood behind them and kept one of the turians at bay, still commenting pertly.

"By the spirits." Actius eyes spread wide open in shock as he saw what was going on above their heads, not in the sky where planes were still having dogfights, far more higher above, in high orbit.

Their ships, which had still been guarding the sky above them, were bruning and falling apart, while a giant monster of spaceship was now filling the sky.

Human reinforcements had arrived.

This giant ships was the UNSCs flagship, the Infinity under the command of the famous Vice-Admiral Lasky, which had destroyed the remains of the turian fleet.

Rear-Admiral Archer was currently on the Infinitys bridge and he could have kissed Lasky out of gratitude, he had expected a small ISA fleet to support him, but instead this small fleet had been accompanied by a giant number of UNSC ships, which had simply crushed the aliens without even losing a single ship.

"One alien ships has been able to retreat through the relay, should we chase it ?" Wellington, the Infinites new AI told the crew, while Archer watched him with amazement.

Beeing on board of the Infinity had shown him how primitive the ISA ships really were, they didn't even knew how to produce Ais or ships as large as the Infinity.

Wellington followed the tradition of an british influenced Infinity AI, after good old Roland had been put out of order a few years ago.

But Lasky still missed the former AIs attitude, Wellington was far more distant and strict than Roland, but he had to accept it.

"Tell High Command that our fleet will need to stay here for longer, in cease that the aliens send more troops to finish the job." Lasky orderd, just before another report was brought to him by Wellington.

"Reports from Falos garrison. Most of the alien troops have surrenderd after their fleet was crushed and now they request our assistance.

They have gatherd many samples of the aliens technologies our scientists would like to see.

They also need pioneer squads for emergency help."

Lasky shoot a short glance at Archer, who had still not said a word since they had greeted each other, before he gave out more orders.

"Send down as many Pelicans as we can, the eggheads will go crazy over this stuff and those people need our help.".

"Rear-Admiral." he now adressed the ISA officer," you'll need to stay on board of the Infinity. We'll soon have a conference with Earth High Com. Your ships doesn't have the technologie for this."

Archer nooded in replay, he didn't dare to speak, to overwhelmed by the Infinity, as two Marines escorted him to his quarter.

His ships didn't need him, for the time beeing they had been put under Laskys command and this conference was far more important.

But it took three more days until really everybody needed for the conference was gatherd, so everybody was happy when it finally started.

Lasky and Archer stood in the Infinitys communication deck, which was filled with a large number of hologramms, which were divided through colours.

Green for the UNSC council, the largest group made up of Admirals, Osman beeing the most prominent after Lord Hoods retirement 2 years ago, and several mebers of the civilian UEG.

Blue for the ISA, which was represantet by Admiral Foley, the only 45 years old and still dynamic commander of all ISA fleets, General Andrea Wrigth, commander of all ISA ground forces and Chancellor Helene Park, the head of the ISA goverment.

And finally the two red hologramms of Jorhan Stahl, the inoffical leader of Helghan and largest weapon producer, whos private army and fleet was strong enough to conquer him his own empire if he wanted to, and Admiral Orleck an old and massive man, the Commander of all regular Helghan forces.

"Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for joing this meeting, it is of great importance that our three nations cooperate in this.

Falos had been attacked by an unknown species, as you all know, but we were able to crush the invaders.

Still, this situation is very dangerous, esspecially with the data our AIs and scientists had been able to win out of the captures alien equipent.

We are facing not a single species, but a collective of several alien nations, which have united under the banner of the so called 'Citadel' .

The militaric arm of this collective, a species called Turians, who share some similaritis with the Sangheili, was responsible for the attack.

The data also indicates that this collective has a large military power, maybe even enough to possibly beat us."

Some of the UNSCs civillian represantives gasped over Laskys explanation, painfull memories from the war against the Covenant returned to their minds.

"But this Citadel seems to be different than the Covenant, they seem to be at least less interested in glassing worlds than diplomacy." Lasky kept on explaining " Although the the data is still incomplete, I would still say that we can assume that this won't be a new genocidal war, unless we want one."

"Still " after two minutes of silence, the heavily breathing Orleck, whos health was not very good, brought in a new idea, " which course of actions will we take ? This data indicates that the Citadel normally annexes all species it meets. Also a lot people will thurst for revenge after the unprovoked attack on Falos, we could appear weak if we simply approach them and act like nothing had happend." the Admiral finsihed with a intense cough and could hardly talk due to his heavy breaths now, so Stahl took the initiative.

"What about a show of power ? Appease the masses and make this Citadel realice who they are up against. But only if the civilian goverments are approving it." Stahrl showed all of aversion towards esspeially the ISA in his last sentence, but everybody simply ignored it.

Everybody knew that the Helghasts cooperation was only out of necessaty, they needed to play nice

"Mister Stahl is right, a show of force would send a clear signal to those aliens, but we shouldn't attack a major military installation, this could cause too much looses on both sides.

I suggest an attack on this independent world ." a large, blue planet appeared in the middle of the room, a typical garden world.

"This is Illium, a independent world which is inhabitated by mostly Asari, one of the Citadel species, but we were not able to retrieve much data about them.

This world seems to be quite important for the Asari, occuping it would surely make those aliens consider us as serious powers."

"Or warmongers." Archer mumbeld to himself while listening.

He didn't like the idea of occupying an alien world, there too many unknown factors in this gamble, this could cause a new war afterall.

The discussions now drifted away to minor details, but everybody in the end agreed to the plan, to muster an large fleet and army to take this planet before the aliens could react.

One week later, Joint fleet near the Falos Relay

It had only been a week, but a giant fleet had been gatherd in the system now, ready for the counter-attack.

190 ships, 100 from the UNSC, 40 ISA-cruisers and 50 helghan ships had been gatherd, one off the largest human fleets in modern history.

"Ok gentleman, this is gonna be our battlplan" the commanding officers of the fleet had again gatherd on the Infinity, to finallice their prepations.

"Our joint fleet will at first break through the orbital defense of Illium. We expect only average resistance, this world seems to be independent so the Citadels military will not present.

Once we have reached the upper hand in space, our ground offense will start.

The first wave will have two major objectives.

The first is the capitol city of Nos Astra, a giant city made of skyskapers at aquator of the planet, which will be attacked by several ODST battalions.

Our troops will secure several skyscapers in the center and try to disrupt any responce by the local goverment, but the soldiers should avoid the lower areas, which have very high temperatures.

At the same time two divisions of Helghast light Infantery will land on the planets northern pole and establish a bridgehead and they also want to use one of their favourite toys." everybody knew which weapon was meant and every ISA officer present a cold shiver running down his spine as thought about it.

Lasky now went on with his talk, while he showed it on the hologramm of the planet ,

" The first wave will have to fight three hours on their own, until the second will attack.

This second wave will be made of ISA troops, Marines and Raiders.

The 3rd armoured Marine-Division will bring in 'more' muscles for the Helghast, crushing any remaining resistance at the poles, while the Raider companies will assist the ODST in Nos Astra.

The third wave will be send in once we have completly secured the bridgeheads and will be made of a whole UNSC Marine-Army, 150 000 man to be precise.

With the 30000 Helghan soldiers, 12000 ISA-Marines and 3500 Raiders we will have nearly 200000 man on the ground to occupy the world, more than enough." the plan was good, but it would work if the Citadel couldn't mobilice a counter-attack within 72 hours.

Illium, Nos Astra goverment building

"Mister Hakan, you're still owing me 1000000 credits, do you really want to make me wait any longer ?

Oh really, well let me ask you a question . Have you ever meet an Asari Commando ? Not many have surived it, if you know what I mean." she wanted to threaten this dirty Volus even more, but Benezia was interrupted as her assistant stormed into her office, heavily breathing and completly frightend.

"Matriach, a unknown fleet has appeared in the system. Our ships are already destroyed." she took a deep breath, before she told her boss the most important fact, " the fleet has nearly 200 ships and one of them is more than twice the size of the Destiny Assention."

Benezias face paled, this was impossible, a fleet this large and ships this gigantic from an unknown species, this couldn't happen.

And why would they attack Illium ?

"Contact Captain Arihee, tell her that I need her Commandos now and combat ready." Benezias assistant nooded and hurried back to her desk, to contact said Asari, while the Matriach fell back into her chair.

She took a few deep breath, before she opend drawer of her desk, in which she kept her pistol.

It was an older model, a relict from her time as a Commando, but still more than enough to even take out heavy armoured opponents.

"Lets hope that I won't have to use you old friend." she mumbeld towards the gun, before she putted it back into the desk.

How could something like this happen.

"Entering atmosphere of Illium, 2 minutes until we reach the norther pole of the planet." a monotnous voice came out of the speakers inside the Overlord shuttle, giving only the needed information to the Helghast troopers inside.

Over dozen were sitting on small benches, without any security belts and only holding their rifles.

"AA-fire !" the voice of the pilot was just as calm and cold as always.

The Helghan soldiers were drilled to never show fear or any other emotion, so they also showed none as the shuttle started to shake heavily.

"Groundcontact in five, four, three, two, soldiers out !" the flap of the ship opend and the soldiers stormed out, like they had trained over and over again.

The Helghan Army only knew one way of moving, forward to attack until the enemy was beaten, although the soldiers had not much equipment.

A dust coat, with a light amour plate underneath and of course the madatory gas mask with an integrated radio was all they got.

An Sta-52 assault rifle and some handgrades were all they had to fight, they were dispensable canon fodder, meant to overwhelm with mass and willpower.

Armin Harka was one of the thousands soldiers who now landed on this alien world, charging at the defenders and taking cover behind a piece of debris.

It had been 15 minutes since the first Helghan soldiers had landed and the landing zone was still hot, local security forces still putted up strong resistance and pinned the Helghans behind their cover.

They were only light infantery, no verhicles and only few heavy weapons and they had landed in the middle of a city, surrounded by natives who all fired at them.

"Holy crap." Armin couldn't believe what he saw, one of the aliens, who all seemed to be female, shoot a blue energy ball from her hands, which hitted one of the nearby soldiers, sending him flying across the area, until he slammed into a wall.

He raised his rifle and fired at the alien, who collapsed as the bullets penetrated her chest.

"Those aliens have some strange abilities sergeant !" Armin screamed towards his squad leader, who ducked behind the debris together with him.

"Yes and their preparing some heavy support !" one of the soldiers, who used a binocular, had spotted something a few hundred yards away.

It were at least dozen heavy armoured mechs, together with dozens of obviously heavy infantry'men', gathering to punch a hole into the Helghan frontline.

"Sir, our 'little' friend is about to come." one of Armins comrades commented, as he pointed towards the giant dropship, it was as large as a UNSC frigate, and slowly approached the battlefield.

They would get their heavy support.

"Return fire ! Don't let them gain any more room !" Captain Allya screamed as she and her deputies tried to defend their position.

They were only policemen, but everyone with a gun was now fighting the invaders, since Illium had no real military, like the whole Asari Republics.

Their opponents were completly coverd in pitch black armour and obviously elite soldiers, since they had taken out half of the defending Asari without even loosing a single men and they were only six soldiers fighting at least 20 police officers.

But the most amazing thing about them was the way they had reached the ground, they had fallen down in some strange metal boxes and then simply jumped out of this things like nothing had happend.

"Any reinforcements nearby ?" she screamed to one of her comrades, but she got as a reply were shaking heads, no one was there who would help them.

"By the goddess." she whisperd, as the aliens kept on firing on them, killing 3 more of her deputies.

They couldn't stop those things.

"By the goddess ! What is this thing !" the commander of the Eclipse mercenaries couldn't believe what she was seeing.

She and her men had just gatherd enough firepower for a counter-offence as the aliens had suddenly brought in their super-weapon.

A gigantic walker, 10 stories tall and obviously armed with everything you could imagine.

Machine guns, rockets and mortars had decimated her troops until they didn't pose anymore threat to the invaders.

But they still had an ass up their sleeve and they were about to pull it, an Eclipse frigate which would show this monster whos the boss.

"Aerial strike in 10,9,8,7... " the frigate was only a distant spot in the sky which approached with high speed, when the MAWLR turned to face it.

The Asari already wanted to cheer about the fact that they would now bomb this thing away, as the walkers main weapon vaporized all of their hopes.

A enourmous beam of energy simply cutted the frigate in half, a MAWLR could bring down cruisers with enough time, a small frigate was no problem.

The Helghast had sufferd heavy looses, the intial resistance had been strong and heavy, killing many Helghast soldiers in the first 10 minutes, but now the aliens seemed to get weaker every minute.

The Helghast holded the MAWLR back, since they still lacked aerial domination and didn't want to loose their strongest weapon to the aliens small gunships.

The had fullfieled their obejctives, a bridgehead was secured and they would now wait for the ISA-Tanks, although this fact hurted many officers pride.

The Helghast Army looked down on the ISA military, to depend on them was a shame for every true Helghast.

The black armoured bodies of the invaders flew around like ragdolls, before a strong push threw them out of the skyscapers window.

Allya simply couldn't believe her luck, at one moment she and her remaining policemen were about to be finally overwhelmed, just second before a team of Commandos had simply taken out the alien soldiers, with no problems.

She was already about to thank the Asari soldiers as the roaring of gun fire forced them back in to cover.

Some sort of strange air vehicle had suddenly appeared in front of the broken window, on top of which several alien stood, firing with everything they got, including a mini-gun.

"Eat this assholes !" the Commandos leader fired a Warp the aircraft, which destroyed one of its engines, sending it together with the aliens falling to the ground.

Allya now approacher the window and she nearly lost her breath as she saw what was going on outside.

Hundred of those strange, alien aircrafts were flying around the nearby building, firing into them or unloading troops.

The first wave had been worse enough, many buildings had been lost to the aliens and now they even got reinforcements and air support.

"How are supposed to stop something like this ?" she mumbeld to herself while the other remaining police officers were just as shocked.

"We need to reach amtriach Benezia, can you help us Captain Allya ?" the Asari-commandos had to amny centuries of experience to be devastated by something like this, they had a mission and they would fullfill it.

"Yes, shes in the higher levels, but there are dozens of alien soldiers and I'm sure that already got her if she didn't escape." the Commandos could only chuckel about this.

"Those aliens wouldn't even survive looking at Benezia, believe me officer, she can take care of herself. We're just here to make things easier.".

Chapter 1 End

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><p>Colonial Intellegence Network Entry # 00000000001<p>

The Intersolar Strategic Alliance (ISA):The ISA was founded out of necessity not love, a defensive alliance between the independant colonies, who had nearly no military at this point.  
>ISA military was still weak at the beging of the Helghast War, but was massivly reinforced after the first year and soon became a force to be reconned with.<p>

The ISA became a colonial goverment after the civilian goverments collapsed during the intial invasions. It todays has a parliament and civlian goverment and leaves much spaces to the single colonies.

Its fleet is considerd strong and well equipped, while the ground troops are often victims of jokes about their incompetency .

* * *

><p><strong>Authors note:<strong>

**All human nations fighting together, what the hell ?**

**Well don't get too much used it, because humans never stay united for long.**


	3. Chapter 2

_And the next chapter is out. I'm not going to much into detail with the invasion of Illium since its only the opening, but I hope that I'm able to clear some questions._

_Now have fun with the chapter ^^_

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><p><span><strong>Xover: Chronicles of the outer colonies<strong>

**Chapter 2**

**Skyscapper crawling**

"We lost contact with team Tango-Lima and Alpha-Sierra Major. We're loosing our positon downstairs." one his men told Major Austin about the situation, but he couldn't care about those teams at the moment, he and his soldiers needed to take the buildings roof and hold it until reinforcements arrived.

But this objective became harder every minute, those blue aliens proved to be harder opponents than he had expected.

Nobody had told them that those things had some sort of 'Force powers' which they used to throw the ODSTs around like ragdolls.

Only 20 men were left of his company and he needed to push upstairs, onyl a few floors were left to take and they couldn't fail so close to the obejctive.

"Arrgh !" the two men who had just been their vanguards were thrown out of the window by those alien powers and the remaining man stormed up the stair and directly ducked into cover, a third soldiers armour was pierced by several projectiles, making him fall on the ground, heavily bleeding.

It was only two aliens, obviously no soldiers since they were fancy dresses, but still their abilities were amazing.

One of them had somehow created a barrier, reminding them a little of the Prometheans shielding, while the second alien attacked them with a pistol and her powers.

She now threw a blue ball of energy at them, which crushed the cover two soldiers were ducking behind, before shooting the men whiel they tried to find another protection.

"Heavy weapons in position. Fire !" two of the ODSTs now started to spray the barrier with their LMG, trying to overwhelm it.

The Asari already started to show signs of exhaustion, when another soldier gave her the final blow with Bazooka.

The large explosion blocked their vision for some seconds, but when the smoke cleared, the barrier was gone and both Asari lay on the ground, one motionless while the other was already getting back on her feet.

Twelve barrels aimed at her and the soldiers were abotu to pull the trigger, when suddenly the world turned upside down.

Somehting pushed them form behind, sending them fly across the room.

The sound of shattering glass and bones filled the air, as most soldiers rboke through the windows to fell out of vision, while the Major hitted a collar, breaking several of his ribs.

"Matriach !" the Asari Commandos, together with the surving policemen, stormed the room, after they had taken out the humans, looking for Benezia, who was now finally back on her feet.

"I'm alright, just a little dizzy. My assistant has shielded me from most of the damage." her voice was filled with sorrow as she saw the lifeless body of the young Asari, her assitant had only been a hundred years old, just a little older than her own daughter and far too young to die.

"We got one survivor !" the police officers had now approached Austin, poiting their weapons at him.

The ODSTs had killed so many off their fellow police officers, so nobody could have blamed them if they had simply shoot the human on sight.

"Wait, don't harm the alien. We can get Information out of him." Benezia orderd the other Asaria, who had no idea what she wanted to do.

The Matriach approached the human and removed the helmet, revealing the face.

It was very similar to the Asari, which shocked many of them, but his skin was pink and he had fur on top of his head.

He mumbeld something in an obviously offensive tone and tried to resist, but the pain in his chest stopped him from doing anything.

Benezia now touched the humans temples, who still struggeld against it, but his eyes went blank, just like Benezias as she mindmelded with the alien.

"Is it really a good idea to mind meld with this unknown species ? Their nerve system could possibly hurt or even kill the Matriach." one the cops asked frightend, but the Commandos only replied grinning.

"Benezia is one of strongest Asari alive, she'll notice if anything goes wrong and there is a lot needed to kill her."

Austin didn't knew where he was, this alien had touched him, then everything had gone black and now he was floating in some dark space.

"Do not fear, I won't harm you." the alien suddenly appeared out of nowhere and slowly approached him.

"Stay away from me alien, I warn you." he wanted to grab for his pistol, but there was nothing and the Asari seemed to be amused about him now.

"We are inside your mind, so there are no weapons you can use. I want to talk with you." Austin was a well trained elite-soldier, but even for him this was a little too much.

"I... I got no idea what you're talking about and I don't why I should talk with an alien like you." the fact that benezia again simply replied by smiling again didn't make the situation better for him.

"Xenphobic, very interesting. I have to say you're quite well trained, everything except for my Commandos had no chance to stop you and your men.

But still, tell me why have you attacked Illium unprovoked ?"

Austin grinned angrily at her, as he replied :

"Unprovoked, really ? Tell this the thousands of soldiers who died while defending Falos. You and your friends attacked a human colony and this is our answer to it."

Austin didn't knew the full truth about this operation, High Command had decided to leave out a few details.

They officaly didn't knew that Illium was independent, nor that it was not the base from which the Turians had attacked them.

Nobody could prove them wrong, since only High Command and a few eggheads really knew how much data about the Citadel they had.

This attack was mainly to appease the Helghasts and the nationalists and radicals, but there was another reason which most soldiers, even the ODST didn't knew about.

ONI agents, Helghast special forces and ISA Shadow Marshalls had secretly landed during the fighting and were now busy gathering as many alien technology as they could, something Illium was perfect for.

But neither Austin nor Benezia knew about this so she didn't doubt the humans answer, but she was still a little shocked.

" I don't know anything about an attack that was started from Illium and I can say, without beeing arrogant, that I knew everything important that is going on on this world." for a second Austin falterd, but he directly regained his stance.

For a few seconds everything was silent, Benezia simply inspected the human, until the soldier had enough of it : "Major Andrew Austin, vice-commander of the 212th Helljumper Battalion. Thats all you'll get from me and now let me go."

A small smile was visible on the Matriach lips, before the scene simply disappeared.

The ODST opend his eyes again and took a deep breath, he was back in the office he and his men had tried to storm, leaning against the pillar.

"Matriach, were you able gain any information ?" there was no worry in the Commandos voice, they all knew very well that a simple meld was nothing for Benezia.

She was already back on her feet again and got ready to leave.

"We need to reach my personal ship, those aliens don't seem to attack civil ships, at least not until now." she was right, UNSC and Vekta High Command had orderd not shot on evacuation vessels, while Lasky had made sure that the Helghast flottile didn't get near any fleeing vessels.

While Benezia and her Commandos now hurried to the space port other battles in Nos Astra were not in favor of the Asari.

The ODSTs had been able to secure several skyscapers, while the ISA Intruders had gatherd those soldiers who were isolated ot couldn't fullfill their objectives.

The local security forces had been no problem for the elite-soldiers, but they had also encounterd numerous Eclipse mercenaries and some Commandos, whos biotics had dealt serious looses to the humans.

The whole first wave had sufferd high looses, 25 % casaulities for the Helghast landing forces and nearly 20 % for the ODSTs, but with the second wave the situation had stabaliced, the heavy ground and air support from the ISA division had turned the situation in favour of the humans.

No Helghast soldier would have ever dared to admit it, but every single one of them felt happy as they finally saw the heavy dropships of the ISA.

Those thing were larger than the Overlords the Helghans used, meant to carry tanks and artillery, just like one of those that now approached Armin.

Its large flap opend and revealed one of the ISAs Lancer wheel tanks, which rolled out and directly fired one of its 105 mm shells into a nearby enemy mechs.

The explosion tore apart the machine, killing the Asari which had seeked cover behind it.

Those Lancers had dealt quite some damage to the Helghast army during the last war, but they lacked the heavy armour and off-road abilities other tracked tanks like the Scorpion or even the new ISA Archer tanks had.

"Hmmpf, they're just sending their old tanks to get rid of them." Armin mumbeld before he turned away to join his unit again.

But at least the armoured ISA-division brought more than just those old tanks, much needed support like AA-vehicles and APCs, stuff the light Helghast Infantry didn't have.

Now hundreds of these vehicles stormed the aliens position, crushing most of the remaining alien troops, who simply weren't prepared for it, while the MAWLR brought oblivion on anything stupid enough to resist.

It was strange, the initial resistance had been heavy and would have for sure crushed the Helghasts, if they hadn't brought an MAWLR with them, but now, after a few hours it simply broke apart, some aliens had even ran out of ammo, like the local defences had no logistics at all.

But this was nothing a simply soldier like Armin would care about, the UNSC main force would arrive soon, too, so they needed to clean everything up until then.

And they did good, which pleased Vice-Admiral Lasky on board of the Infinity, a small alien ship, obviously civillian had just passed the fleet, he had orderd to not shoot it down, but now the resistance on the planet seemed to become weaker by the minute.

Dozens of Pelicans had already returned, full with alien tech and stuff the eggheads would kill for.

"There is something that bothers me Vice-Admiral." General Harskus, commander of the Helghast invasion forces now approached him and Lasky felt a shiver going down his spine as he saw the Helghast.

Lasky had never like the Helghan military, you never knew with they were giving you a hand for help or just to kill you from behind.

And Harkus was just a perfect example of this, although the General had 'behaved' while he was on board of the Infinity.

"What is it General ?" Lasky replied, although he had always tried to avoid conversation with the Helghast.

"I was wondering Vice-Admiral, if this was supposed to be a show of military power, why not sending in any Spartans ? Doesn't the Inifinty have an impressive contingent of these soldiers ?" of course, something like this couldn't have stayed unnoticed by a mind as sharp as Harskus, so Lasky decided to tell him the truth, afterall it was nothing worth hiding.

"Because we don't want to show those aliens all we got. The Spartans were our strongest weapon during the war against the Covenant, they could be it again, if this becomes a new great war."

Harskus seemed to satisfied, so Lasky went back to the commando display, checking the status of the operation that were still ongoing.

Resistance had been minimal since the third wave had landed, the massive UNSC force had simply crushed any remaining resistance with taking only few looses.

Most of the northern pole and large parts of the capital were now under human controll and even the Helghast soldiers 'behaved' just like their General, since Lasky had forbidden any cruelties against the civilian population .

"Any progress on the translation software Wellington ?" the Infinitys AI had been busy using the technologie they had gatherd to creat an translator, to allow communication.

"Ninety percent finished sir, this one species, Elcor, their language and grammar is a little difficult, but the Council species will be fnished until tomorrow. We can start the last part of our mission then."

the Hologramm of the AI, his avatar was an excat copy of the british admiral Wellington, appeared next to Lasky, who replied.

"Both the ISA and the Helghast represantives are on board. The fleet will be able to finish this without the Infinity, so lets jump to this 'Citadel' to make sure that this won't become a full scale war."

The Citadel was in chaos, the news of the invasion on Illium had chaosed a mass panic on the station and C-Sec had been busy to at least keep some sort of public order, while the Council was busy debatting.

It had been one week since Illium had fallen and no counter-attack had been started, mainly because Illium was independent and the Turian fleet had prepared for another attack into human terretory.

"This is outrageous, Illium is under attack and the Council hasn't done anything at all." the represantive off Illium was angry, she had tried to convince the Citadels leaders to mobilice for an counterattack, but all they had done was debatting and finding excuses.

"We are doing our best ambassador, but you must understand that we can not simply mobilize such a large fleet, esspecially since we have to expect attacks on other worlds." Councilor Valern tried to appease the Asari, but she only replied by storming out of the chambers, while throwing around many Asari curses.

"But she is rightm it is outrageous that an alien nation is currently occuping Illium after the Turian had attacked one of their worlds." Councilor Tevos, the Asari represantive, now turned to her Turian colleague,who only shock his head in defence.

"We didn't do anything wrong, the fleet only enforced Citadel Law and stopped those newcomers from activating a dormant relay. Nobody could have forseen such a turn of events." the Turian tried to defend himself and his goverment, but he knew that they was at least partially to blame for this dillema.

The fleets reaction had been far too much, attacking the single was alright but crushing a whole defensive fleet and then attacking a colony ?

But this wasn't important now, they needed to find sollution for this.

"The Hierachy is mobilising several fleets and legions to retake Illium, will the other species also send troops ?" Sparatur knew that they had to retake Illium or the people would loose their trust in them.

"Yes of course, the Union has already two fleets, several infantry division and STG-teams on their way." Valern answerd, together with the fleets the Asari had already gatherd they would have three times as many ships as the fleet which occupied Illium.

"Couincilors ! I have urgent news !" one of Valern bodyguards, the STG agent Mordin Solus, stormed into the chamber, heavily breathing.

"Gigantic alien dreadnought, quater the size of the Citadel, has suddenly appeared near the station, they're halling us and ask for negotiations !" Mordin was a fast speaker, even by Salarian standard but everybody had understood the most important things.

"Open a comm-line, now !" everybody was now in a hurry,nobody had expected this, but maybe there was really a chance for peace.

The bridge of the Infinity was just as busy , everybody was in a hurry and prepared for the worst, since everything could happen.

They had fallen out of slipspace a few minutes ago, just in front of this station, which was small compared to High Charity, and had opend communication.

But the only good sign until now was that the guarding fleet, which numberd at least 200 ships, had not opend fire until now.

"Sir you know that a single salvo from this fleet could even send the Infinity into Nirvana !" Wellington was as calm as always, while even Lasky was stressed and hoped to recieve an answer soon.

Next to him stood the represantives from the other human factions, Rear-Admiral Archer for the ISA and Hera Visari, the dead Autarch Visaris daughter, a women in her late twenties with strong and determined eyes.

She was only still alive because Stahl and Orleck used her to appease the population, they had given her the nice sounding titel of 'First Chairman Visari' which had no real political meaning.

"Admiral, we're recieving an answer, a video call, shall we respond ?" Laskys hearth nearly fell into his feet out of relief and he only nooded in replay.

The face of an Asari appeared on the screen, Lasky had read the data they had about this species, but it still suprised them how similar to humans they seemed to be.

At least if you ignored the tentacle hair, the blue skin and the all-women species stuff.

"I'm Vice-Admiral Thomas Lasky, Captain of the UNSC Infinity and represantive of the UEG, the United Earth goverment. Those beside me are Rear-Admiral Archer of the ISA, the Intersolar Strategic Alliance and Ambassador Hera Visari of the Helghast Dominion. Its an pleasure to meet you."

Lasky tried to sound polite and he was maybe the only of the three represantives who was really able to, Archer had lost many man and was in no good mood and Hera Visari, well she was an Helghast and they weren't famous for beeing great diplomats.

"I'm Councilor Tevos, Vice-Admiral, represantive of the Citadel Council and the Asari Republics,and its an even larger pleasure for me to meet the three of you." the aliens voice was soft and polite and Lasky relaxed a litte.

At least he hadn't messed up anythign with the first words.

"Councilor." Hera now took the word, her voice was determined and strong, but without sounding aggresive,something not many Helghast could,

" We are here to find a solution to a problem you are well aware of. We ask for your permission to come anboard the station so that we can talk in person." Hera wasn't a person who liked small talk, she wanted to deal with the problems now and neither Lasky nor Archer had any problems with it.

"Alright Miss Hera. I'm sending you coordinates for your shuttles to land, C-Sec will then escort you to the Council chambers. Tevos out." the screen went black again and everybody on the bridge, except for Hera, relaxed.

First talking didn't go wrong and it seemed like there was a chance for peace.

Now everything went fast, it only took ten minutes until three vessel, an UNSC Pelican, an ISA VTOL and a Helghast Overlord were on their way, onboard the ambassodor and their bodyguards.

Alien fighters started to escort them once they were out of the Infinitys reach, guiding them to their destination.

The first transport to land was Laskys, who had decided to take only one bodyguard, his well trusted friend Commander Sarah Palmer, an Spartan-IV.

Afterall those aliens wouldn't directly been able to see the differnce between her and the ODSTs.

The second was Archer, he was accompanied by half a dozen ISA-Marines, he hadn't been allowed to bring more to the Infinity.

And the last one was Hera Visari, who had, just like Lasky, only one Bodyguard, Ivan Radek, son of the legendary Mael Radek and personal agent of Hera, just like his fahter had served her father.

He wore a gasmask and the normal long dust coat every Heghast soldier had, which seemed to inntimadate the gatherd crowd, while the humans were greeted by an Turian C-Sec officer.

"I'm Executor Pallin, Head of C-Sec. I will escort you to the council." the humans only nooded and followed the Turian and his men, who formed a circle around the ambassadors to shield them from the reporters and civillians.

But still or maybe because of this, Radek felt like something was wrong and his hand hoverd over his pistol the whole time, ready to empty the whole magazine into the aliens if needed.

"Relax Radek, we're here for talking, not fighting." Hera noticed how stressed her bodyguard was, Ivan was only 21 years old, but already one of the best in the whole Dominion, and he still lacked the experience and calmness of his father sometime.

"Yes mam." he replied and relaxed his hand, away from his pistol.

Palmer and Lasky seemed relaxed, afterall none of this aliens would for sure have a chance against a Spartan, while ISA-Marines holded their guns tight, always scanning the surroundings.

They finally reached an elevator, which made very ugly sounds as Palmer with her heavy armour stepped in, which shocked the Executor visibly.

They then finally stood in front of the council chambers, where Pallin told them that only one bodyguard per ambassodor was allowed, so five Marines had to wait outside.

Only a second after the main group had enterd the room, someone approached the small group, an Asari Matriach.

"You're not like the soldiers I fought on Illium, am I right ?" it was Matriach Benezia, who wanted to find out more about the humans.

The soldiers looked at each other, confused, before one of them replied :

"No, you wouldn't be alive if you'd fought us." the joke wasn't good, at least not for aliens while every human soldier would layed on the floor laughing, since the ISA-Marines were not famous for their skill. Well at least the translators worked.

"No, for sure not." Benezia replied smiling, she wanted information and beeing nice could often help alot in this situation.

While Benzia now appoached the poor Marines, the real talking started inside the Council chambers.

"Greeting Vice-Admiral Lasky, Rear-Admiral Archer and Ambassodor Hera Visari, I welcome you onboard of the Citadel." Tevos greeted the humans friendly, after C-Sec had dragged out a screaming Asari from Illium, who had tried to interrupt the meeting, naked.

"Free Illium, no war !" she screamed until the officers had finally brought her out of sight.

Everybody tried to ignore this incident, so Lasky replied :

"Thank you very much Councillor, I and I think speak for every human, am very happy that we could meet to end this terrible incident. "

Chapter 2 End

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><p>Colonial Intellegence Network Entry #01100234434<p>

The Helghast Dominion:

Formerly known as the Helghast Empire the Dominion is the current goverment of Helghast and its colonies.

Its officaly lead by the Helghan Council, but most of the power is concentrated in the hands of Jorhan Stahl and Admiral Orleck.

The Dominiom has a large army and fleet,numeric larger than the ISA military ,but of all human factions it is the most primitive.

Relations with the UNSC and the ISA are bad, but the new First Contact caused an at least temporally cooperation with them.

There is a small, but growing movement within the Helghan population that is calling for political change and an end if the faschist goverment, but Stahl private army and secret police has been kepping it down until now.

* * *

><p>Authors Note:<p>

Next chapter out, I hope this answers some questions. Well, here you got it, Illium was mainly attacked because the humans wanted to have as many shiny Mass Effect tech as possible and no Spartan action.  
>And by the way a warning, this won't be 'Humanity owns the Citadel' story, since I don't think that a normal Spartan will have much luck against biotics, if hes not prepared and I believe that the citadel species are not as weak as many see them. Author out.<p> 


	4. Chapter 3

_Hey, new chapter here. Hope you people will enjoy it._

* * *

><p>Xover: Chronicles of the outer colonies<p>

**Chapter 3**

**United for the longest time**

"An incident ? Really Vice-Admiral ? I understand that you could call the turian attack an incident, but your people just invaded a both independent and peacefull world for nor reason." Tevos was a calm and friendly person normally, but even she had ben outraged by the occupation of Illium, so it was hard for her to put away this anger.

"Councillors, we have to depply apologise for out terrible mistake. We would have never attacked Illium if we had known this." Hera Visari lied without even flinching,while her cold voice gave no signs of unsecurity.

"We had only very little data about the fleet which had attacked Falos, we could only find the coordinates of Illium and guessed that it was the base from which the colony had been attacked." Hera kept on lying, since Archer was too honest and Lasky not a good diplomat.

"There is no need to blame anybody for this, we will for sure find a solution to this problem." Valern tried to calm the situation, the Salarian was the only councilor who holded no grudgeds against the humans.

Sparatus turian pride had been hurt because of this defeat against the humans, while Tevos was outraged since thousands of Asari had died during the invasion.

"There is one question that I need to ask the three of you, ambassadors. You are all humans, but still you seem to be represantives of different nations, how is this possible ?" it was only natural that this question was asked, since it wasn't something usual for the Citadel to see a species divided in different factions.

"Of course, I would be very happy to tell you the reason." Archer now spoke for the first time, he didn't have to lie while telling humanitys history, so it was a chance for him.

"Humanity founded its first colony in the year 2080, nearly 500 years ago on our homeplanets moon. It took nearly 200 years until we developed our first Slipspace-engines and started to colonize other star systems. For over 250 years humanity spread peacefully across the stars and founded hundreds of prospering colonies, until, one day we meet our nemesis." Archer let out the Insurrection, stories about the UNSC crushing uprisings and and even nuking rebelling colonies were nothing you should tell during a first meeting.

"The Covenant, an theocratic alien empire, made up of several species, attacker us, believing that we were demons they had to destroy.

The glassed hundreds worlds, while their superior technologie made our efforts to defend our world useless.

When they had reached our homeworld, nearly all of our main world had been destroyed and all we could do was gather everything we had left for a last stand.

But, when they attacked, the Covenant broke apart, since their leaders, the Prophets had tried to overturn one of the main species, the Sangheili, which caused an civil war.

This saved us and we could regroup and rebuild, while the remains of the Covenant are now fighting each other over the last bits that are left of their former empire.

Several colonies were isolated during the war, Vekta and Helghan beeing the two most important of them.

Millions of refugees came to this two worlds and after many years, we founded our nations since we believed the UNSC to be destroyed.

We were very happy to be proved wrong, but our population didn't want to give up their independence to the UEG, the civillian goverment that controlls the UNSC, so we formed agreements which secured the ISAs and the Helghast Dominions independence." Archer let out many details, some like the Flood and Forerunner because he didn't knew about them, or like the fact that the UNSC was not controlled by an civillian goverment, at least not enterly, because it made them look better and of course the last war, because he didn't want to answer any uneasy questions.

Lasky didn't add anything, he was happy that Archer didn't knew that much, but this explanation would be enough for the moment and not mentioning Earths name was also good, Cole Protocoll was still active and the colonies had to accept this.

"So." Tevos had calmed down a little and asked a question, " what are the Covenant species doing today ? Are they still a threat ?" nobody liked the idea of some genocidal powers running amok in Citadel space, but Lasky explanation eased their worries :

"The Prophets are dead, the Sangheili killed every single one they could find, while hte Sangheili themself are busy rebuilding. They are quite peacefull at the moment and even fell a little bad for what they have done. The Brutes or Jiralhanae are busy fighting themself, the Kig Yar, a minor species, has formed a small empire at the edge of our sight, but they're peacefull.

The slave race of the Unggoy or Grunts, are either clients of the Sangheili or isloated on their overpopulated worlds. Some of them have formed radical movements, which wield some military power. These sometimes attack our terrtory or patrolls but their no major threat, since they're fragmentated and no group has more than half a dozen small or a single large ship."

"Enough storytelling, my people need an answer, what will you do about Illium ?!" Tevos had now lost controll of her anger again and shocked her fellow councillors with this reaction.

"Yes Illium." Lasky went on, " We will retreat from Illium once an agreement is formed. But we won't pay any reperation, but we also in return demand none for the damage done to Falos.

Half of our fleet has already retreated as a sign of good will, together with the occupation force in Nos Astra." Tevos face lightend up a little, at least some good news which calmed her down again.

"I thank you very much Vice-Admiral, we appreciate your offer and I'm sure that my fellow councillors will also accept it." Valern nooded in agreement while Sparatus only grunted.

"I'm sure that all of this will be no problem once you join the Citadel, although your fragmantation could cause some problems." Valern now wanted to start the normal procedure for newcomer races, althoug humanity was obviously none, but Lasky only replied, with a fake smile :

"With all honesty councilors, you can forget this for sure !".

Lasky was right and during the now following, long negotiations the Council had to learn that humanity wouldn't simply put itself under the Citadel rules.

The real diplomats arrived the next day and esspecially Archer was happy that he could finally return home and leave politics to the politians.

1th September, 2573

After long and hard negotiations, the Citadel and the humans form an agreement which regulates the future relationships between them.

Several rules are established:

1st : Both the Citadel, the ISA, the Heghast Dominion and the UNSC accept each other as independent and equal nations.

2nd : No military Citadel ship is allowed to enter space of any human nations, while the human nations are not allowed to send their ships into Citadel space either. The Terminus is excluded from this agreement.

3rd : Free trade is allowed, but every nation can handle it like they want to.

The UNSC forbidds the export of anything except for a limited number of recourses, cultural goods and outdated civillian products.

The Helghast Dominion doesn't allow any trade, a little smuggel establishs but nothing worth mentioning.

The ISA is the most open, only modern military goods, slipspace-engines and shield technology are forbidden to trade.

4th : No UNSC AI is allowed to leave UNSC ships while in Citadel space.

5th : Citadel ships are only allowed to visit UNSC worlds they are allowed to. Every ship outside of this systems will be judged by the UNSC and are seen as pirates.

The last human soldier leaves Illium at this day.

2573-2578:

-The ISA establishes healty relations with the Citadel, several trade routes are opend, although right wing politians in the ISA parliament are furious.

The ISAs economy gets a large boost from this, allowing the colonies to finally recover from the last war completly.

-The Helghast Dominion starts to expand into the Terminus, forcing several independent colonies to 'ask' for 'protection' . They enforce heavy taxes on them, while a Helghast mercenary group, under direct controll of Jorhan Stahl, the 'Black Hand' is formed.

The Hand soon challenges the established mercaneries and becomes a big player in the Terminus.

-The UNSC remains neutral towards the Citadel, a little trade is established but nothing really worth metioning, while they make sure that noone finds out anything about the Flood or the Forerunners.

2578 3rd March :

He sat in his chair, watching through the large windows that made up the walls of the room, into the deep darkness of space, while a hologramm appeared behind him.

It was the image of an Sangheili, a shipmaster, judging from his old and worn out armour, who angrily grounted as the man took a few seconds before he turned his chair around.

"Rel'Vadam, it's nice to see you again. I guess you're calling me because your preperations are finished ?" anger was visible on the Elites face, it was obvious that he hated it to cooperate with an filthy human.

"Yes, my fleet is ready to depart. We will attack the colony within the next week. But there is one question I have. Why does a human like you want me to attack an human colony ?"

the human took a deep pull from the cigarate and blew some smoke into the air before he replied, calmly, " Its an colony of an independent nations. We will both benefit from this attack. It will show the colonies that the ISA can't protect them and you will get the fame you need to overthrow your cousin, the Arbiter." the Sangheili nodded, there was only on reason why he cooperated with this huamn.

He could supply him with the money and everything his small fleet needed.

He would crush this world and then gather all resistance cells under his banner and then take back Sangheilos back from the his treacherous cousin.

"There is still one thing I want to know human. What am I supposed to call you , human ?" the man, who was in his late thirties, only answerd.

"I'm the Illusive Man, thats all you need to know." the hologramm dissapeared and the human pressed a button, to contact one of his agents.

"I assume that the ISA garrison is warned ?" he asked his operative and a voice replayed calmly,

"Of course, they'll be able to prevent the worst from happening."

Everything went as planned, within a week they would get rid of an dangerous Sangheili and make the ISA realice that humanity needs to be united under only one banner.

10th March 2578

Falos had easily recoverd from the turian attack 5 years ago, the new trade routes had made the colony even more wealthy than it had already been before the attack.

Even a small number of Asari now lived on this world, as represantives for Asari companies or becasue they worked here.

The money had also been used to establish an orbtial defence, which was made up of 6 large satellites, each of them armed with a Bombard-laser cannonon, AA-guns and several rocket launchers.

9 additional cruisers complemented the colonies defense, making it a well defended and safe world.

But the garrison was still the same like 5 years ago, alot of corruption and Master Sergeant John Bradley was currently using his personal jeep to drive through the Capitols streets.

Busy to reach his wife, the same Sara that he had commanded during the attack on Falos.

She had left the military and they had finally become a real family afterwards and had two kids.

Their older son, the 4 years old Jack was currently on Johns parents farm, visiting his grandparents, while John was now driving home to pick up his wife and his younger daughter.

"John, we're here !" Sara waved her hand and the vehicles stopped in front of her, but her face was showed that she wasn't happy.

"Couldn't you have at least taken a real car and not this piece of trash ?" she was right, the jeep wasn't a really comfortable or modern vehicle, it doesn't even have windows.

"I know darling, but this little baby is fast and the children love it." he tried to defend himself and it seemed to work, since Sara enterd the Jeep and tightly hugged her little daugther, who sitted on her legs.

They smiled at each other, the last five years had been a happy time, no conflicts had interrupted their paradies for a long time.

But Johns face darkend as a familiar tone, reaching his ears, destroying their paradies, the sirens of the emergency defence.

Falos was under attack again.

"Emergency signalo to everything nearby, tell High Command that Falos is under attack !" Commodore Rodrigues, current commander of the defensive force, paniced, this was nothing they had every expected, Falos was under attack again, but not by the Citadel or even the Helghast.

It was something far worse, something they had hoped to never see again.

A dozen Covenant warships had fallen out of slipspace near the planet, 9 light cruisers which were only half the size for the defending ships, 2 CCS-Battlecruiser and a single carrier.

Far too much for the defenders, they had never expected to fight Covenant ships, they were not prepared for this.

"Focus fire on the nearest ships, shoot down the battlecruisers no matter the costs." the Commodore knew that they had to take care of the large ships first, since they were the only ones who could glass a world.

The secondary weapons of the cruisers and satellites came life, dizen of coil gun slugs and hundred of rockets raced towards the alien ships, but were stopped by the shields, which only blurred a little.

The incoming plasma torpedos were more effective, although most of them could be stopped by the cruisers shields, but the few which made it through destroyed 3 cruisers and a satellite.

"Bombard-lasers, now !" Rodrigues screamed and the beams of energy were shoot at the ships.

10 laser beams hitted the nearest battleship, but its shield stopped them all, before it collapsed.

The now unshielded ships was hit by several slugs and rockets, but it wasn't damaged enough to be taken out.

"Satellites focus on the smaller ships, cruisers try to take down the larger ones." they needed to change tacticts of they wanted to stop them, but the next plasma barrage deimated the defenders again.

Only 5 ships and three satellites were left and although 4 Covenant cruisers had been destoryed too, their chances for victory were slimm at best.

They couldn't do anything against the carrier, not even the bombard lasers were able to petrate the shields, while the small Covenant ships were a problem too.

The satellites fired on them again and destroyed two more ships, but the shields of the carrier still stopped any attacks.

The damaged battlecruiser was finally destroyed, but not be for it had taken out another ISA cruiser, reducing the defenders even more.

The fighter crafts the carriers had sent out had now destroyed the last satellites, while the cruisers AA-guns fired non stop to keep them away.

"Sir the last enemy battlecruiser has passed our defense and approaches the capitol." Rodrigues face pales as he got the news, the Covenant ship had bypassed them and now it was left to the garrison to stop them, just like five years ago.

"Sir, their not sending out any dropships, all they do is power up their Energy projector." the commodore now fell back into his chair and needed a minute before he had at least recoverd a little.

"Evacuation. Evac as many people of the planet as possible, we'll fall back and cover the ships." he took a deep breath, before he finished the sentence: " The Covenant are glassing Falos and we can't do anything about it."

He was right, a mighty beam of plasma was fired out of the ship, hitting the center of the capitol, burning everything in his way, houses, people and the Bradleys jeep.

They didn't even realice what was happening, before they cased to exsist, just like thousands of other humans, who never had a chance.

Hundreds of fighter planes charged at the ship and dozens of AA-guns opend fire, but neither the heavy shells, nor the numerous rockets could even scrath the shield.

In return the point-laser defenses of the ships shoot down at least half of the planes within a minute, just like the evacuation ships which left the cities space port.

The citiziens of the capitol city had no chance to escape.

The situation in the smaller cities was better, but there were too few ships for far too many people.

Michael Kellan and his little son Lucas hurried through one of this smaller city, towards the local spaceport.

They had also Jack Bradley with them, since his grandparents were friends of Michael and had asked him to take Jack with him, since Lucas company had a private shuttle to leave the planet.

"Dad, why do we need to run ?" Lucas was a seven-year old boy and he didn't like the fact that he, Jack and his father had to run though the crowd.

Hundred of people filled the streets in front of the spaceport, they hurried and tried to find a place in one of the few escape crafts.

"Uncle Lucas, why doesn't my family come with us ?" little Jack had no idea what was happening, but Michael couldn't answer his question and he didn't knew that Jacks parents were no more.

"Don't worry Jack, they'll come too. We'll wait for them on another colony." Jack had no idea what a colony was supposed to be, but he understood that he would meet his parents their, so he smiled.

"Ok now where is the ship ?" Michael eyes searched through the halls of the space port, the company he worked for had its own hangar from where they evacuated their employess.

He finally found the door, it was guarded by some private security workers who made sure that the hangar wasn't overrun.

"Michael Kellan, this is my son Lucas and Jack belongs to me too." Michael hoped that the security wouldn't care about Jack and they were lucky, after inspecting his card they let the three inside.

They directly hurried to the waiting ship, which was already nearly full.

It was around 300 feet long and inside was enough space for over 500 passengers and on the inside it looked like an typical jet airliner from the 21th century, with many rows of seats.

They found three empty ones and stowed away the few package they had and sitted down, just a few minutes before the vessels engine came to life.

Michael relaxed a little as he started sink into his seat, they had made to the ship.

"All passengers, close your seat bealts, we'll take off now." the pilots voice scratched through the speakers, as everybody was pressed into the seats, as the vessel left the ground.

Large boosters fired up, they were meant to leave the planet since the ships own engines were not strong enough to.

Michael looked out of a small window and nearly screamed as a Covenant Seraph headed for the ship and was only intercepted by a ISA fighter-plane which crashed into it.

The defenders had only bad chances against the aliens small fighters, it took hundreds of bullets to break them, so the pilots had started to use Kamikaze tactics to stop the invaders from shooting down fleeung civilian ships.

The ships now reached the outer atmosphere and finally left the grip of Falos gravity.

The boosters fell of and the main engine came to life, pushing the ship away from the world.

But the battle in space was still going on, although only one defending ship was left, Rodrigues own cruisers, which now stood as a shield between the Covenant and the fleeing civillians.

It fired everything it had, AA-guns rockets and coil guns at once to shoot down as many fighters as possible, but still several reached the smaller ships behind.

They were nearly in weapons range, as ship suddenly charged into them.

An Asari frigate, which Guardian lasers came to live and shoot down every fighter in range.

But it wasn't alone, a whole flottile with several cruisers now attacked the Covenant and crushed the smaller ships with ease, while carriers shields stopped the attacks with ease.

"This is Captain Nyeera, commanding officer of the 21st patrol fleet, we recieved your call for help and came as fast as we could." never before had the ISA soldiers been so happy to see aliens.

But the carrier now returned fire and its plasme torpedos destroyed 2 cruisers which couldn't evade them.

But Rel'Vadams carriers shield were now at a minimum, they wouldn't be able to hold another barrage, so he decided to give the special order to his men on the battlecruiser.

"You won't make it out of here, so do what is needed to clean this world from the humans." , he then turned to one of the bridges crew and told them to jump out of the system.

It only took a moment before the ship dissapeared , while the battlecruiser put the last plan in motion.

A giant explosion let the remain of Falos Capitol vanish, as the ships reactor went critical and exploded.

The explosion of the plasma reactor coverd more than only the city, it was even bigger than the explosion of UNSC Shiva-nuke.

It burned the atmosphere above the ship and destroyed a quarter of the planets surface.

All the refugees and ships in space could do was watch as the paradisic world of Falos was turned into a lifeless desert within a few minutes and after an hour not a single ship left the planet anymore.

There was no need to send down anymore ships to evacuate the people, since none of them was alive anymore.

Falos had died.

The news spread across the galaxy within a day and even the Helghast state media was full of it and Ivan Radek even felt a little sad about the news.

He had always been told that the ISA was his worst enemy, but still he never had any problems with them so the dead of nearly 60 million people was shocking.

"Ivan-darling are you alright ?" Ivans wife came into their small citchen, together with their daughter Maya.

She was beatifull in his eyes, although she already had deep folds, like many Helghast women, simply because the harsch planet took much of their strength.

And Maya, she was beatiful, her skin was soft and her green, bright eyes made him smile everytime.

They were not rich, the personal guard of Hera Visari wasn't payed well by the goverment, but it was enough to life in a lower mid-class district and wouldn't have wanted another life.

But he still felt bad, so many innocents had died on Falos.

15th March 2578:

The counting of looses is finished, only 1 million of the 60 million inhabitants of Falos survived the attack, making it the largest massaker since the Battle of Earth.

The survivors are brought to the other world, while the ISA goverment offically thanks the Asari Republics for their aid.

As a reaction to the attack, the UNSC mobilices sevral fleets near the Sangheili border.

2579:

Radical parties win the ISA-parliament elections and massivly increase military spending.

The ISA now starts to build their own dreadnoughts, while the Shadow Marshall corp, the ISAs special operation until, is strengthen massivly.

2580:

ISA-Helghast realtion reach a new low, since the Helghast increase their already large military budget even more, as reaction to the ISAs build up.

All offical trade relations are cut and diplomatic exchange is kept on a minimum.

At the same time ISA-Citadel relations inprove massivly and only the UNSCs influence stops them from forming even closer ties.

2583:

The first ISA dreadnought is put into service and many consider it to be stronger than most Citadel models.

A Sangheili delegation comes to Vekta and promises to pay repations to the surivors, while their fleet does everything to catch Rel'Vadam and make him pay for his crimes.

Radicals detonate a bomb during demostration, trying to kill the present ambassador.

Hundreds of humans die and Michael Kellan is one of them.

An old camerade of Michael from the Helghast-War, Thomas Sinclair takes care of both Lukas and Jack.

2585:

New Falos is founded by refugees from the destroyed world on a newly discoverd garden world in the Terminus.

Its idependent from the ISA since the people from Falos have lost trust in the ISAs ability to defend its people.

Lukas Kellan enlists in the ISA Shadow Marshall corps and quickly becomes one of the best students.

2588:

Jack Bradley fails to join the Shadow Marshall Academy, the trainers consider him slightly instable, because of his often uncontrolled hate towards most aliens.

2591:

Jack enlists in the ISA military and becomes a member of the Raiders corp.

2593 :

Thomas Sinclair becomes the Shadow Marshalls commander, while Lukas Kellan graduates from the Marshall Academy, as the best of his class.

2596:

Open war breaks out between Omega under the controll of Aria T'Lock and the Helghast Balck hand.

The Citadel, the ISA and Hera Visari send agents to Omega to investigate the conflict.

Our real story beginns.

Chapter 3 End

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><p>Authors Note:<p>

With this chapter the introducing ends, the stage is set for the real story. ISA and Helghast still hate each other and both of them have their special relationships with the Citadel while the UNSC watchs. And of course the most important chain smoker in the whole Mass Effect universe is also here.

I hope you like the story until now, I now that spelling and gramma are a bit rough sometime but I promise that I will correct everythign once I have the will also be more focus on the characters and what happens from now on, since these first chapters were really just meant to show the seeting and set the stage.

But now good night ^^


	5. Chapter 4

Greetings my friends.

I'm still shocked how many people have noticed this shitty Xover story ^^.

But finally the real story begins and some of the main character are introduced.

Much fun with the new chapter.

* * *

><p>Xover: Chronicles of the outer colonies<p>

**Chapter 4**

**Welcome to Omega**

"Pfff, humans." the batarian guard grunted as he inspected the shuttles passengers and one of them belonged to the species he hated the most.

Humans, esspecially those damm Helghast had expanded in the Terminus like crazy, causing alot trouble for Omega and the Hegenomy.

The Black Hand killed pirate or slave dealer they found, not because of morale reasons, but simply to destroy the batarian influence and increase their own.

But this human didn't seem to be a Helghast, he looked like a simply, poor guy who tried to find some sort of luck on Omega, so he could pass without problems.

Every Helghast who tried to enter the parts of Omega who were still controlled by Aria were shoot on sight, just like the Black Hand shoot any other mercenaries without warning.

The man wore dark and simply clothes, worn out jeans and a hoodie and hurried through the masses which now left the shuttle.

It only took a second until he disappeared in the crowd and nobody payed attention to him, although humans were a rare sight on the giant space station.

But he was no normal human, at least he was better trained then most, so avoiding the increased security was no problem for him.

His gear had been sent to the station with another shuttle and was unloaded in the next hangar.

A few hundred credits changed their owner and the guards left him alone for ten minutes, so he could look for his package, before he disappeared again, this time with a large suitcase.

He headed to an empty back road and started to get his gear out, his body armour, the helmet with integrated HUD, his weapons and, of course, OWL.

OWL was a small drone attached to the chine of his armour, which he could sent out any time he needed it.

His weapon, the M55 Rumbler was a more modern weapon than the old M82 most garrison forces still used, it was more compact and had a higher rate of fire, while it was still as stable and reliable as it prodecessor.

A great weapon, still normally not his weapon of choice, but he had to keep his favourite away until he got discoverd, since this weapon would catch far to much attention.

"Ok, now lets start the operation." he mumbeld as he turned on the HUD, which directly showed him all the data he needed on the helmets visor.

He attached a small explosiv charge to the suitcase, which would destroy it once he was out of reach, a small explosion wouldn't catch much attention here on Omega.

He threw his hoodie over the armour and pulled the head over his helmet, otherwise he would cause to much attention with this gear.

He headed back on the main street and hurried into the crowds, which swarmed through the station, not noticing that he had observed the whole time.

"Nice try my dear friend." the person whisperd, before it started to follow its pray again.

"Man, my reputation is far too good, this idiot recogniced me directly." Garrus Vakarian mumbeld as he lowerd his still smoking assault rifle again, after two guards had been stupid enough to get in his way.

The Turian continued his search, he was here with a mission.

A week ago the Council had given him a mission, after the Executer had thrown him out of C-Sec, for breaking a few rules again.

The Council had liked the fact that Garrus didn't take it to serious with rules, a good qualification for a Spectre.

And this was supposed to be his test, after which he would become real Spectre, something that had already given his father more than one heart attack.

His mission was neither easy nor would it give him much glory, he was supposed to infiltrate the area of Omega which were controlled by the Black Hand and gather information about them.

The Council didn't like the fact that the Helghast ran amok in the Terminus, esspecially the Batarian were enraged about it, while Arias influence made sure that the Asari wanted to stop the Black hand , too.

Well, getting into Omega had been easy, but entering the Helghast area was harder.

Everybody who was not an inhabitant or Helghast was denied acsess and only Helghast ships were allowed to dock at the local hangars.

Skrimishs happend all the times on the borders of the area, other mercenaries tried to gain acsees, but the Helghasts massive firepower finished every battle faster than they started.

He would try to use a larger fire fight to gain acsess, while the soldiers were occupied.

The best way to find one was observing one of the larger mercenary groups which were still loyal to Aria.

The best one for this was the Blood Pack, their primitive and brute frontal attacks would surely cause enough confusion for a single Turian to pass through.

It didn't take much time until he had found a group of red armoured Vorcha and Krogans, which headed towards the Helghast controlled areas.

The longer he followed the group, the larger it got, more and moe mercenaries joined the squad, until it numberd nearly 300 hundred warriors.

Garrus prayed to the spirits that they wouldn't notice him, otherwise one of the Krogans would have for sure used him as a toothpick, but luckily they were too focused on their destination.

He followed them for about 10 minutes, through the streets and alleys of Omega, until they stopped, directly in front of a large free space.

No one dared to walk across the free area, which was filled with dead bodies, Eplise, Blue Sun,Blood Pack and fighters from many other groups had found their end there.

Some of the Krogans now pulled out rocketlaunchers, while the Vorcha positioned two mortars, before they started their attack.

The opening was a barrage of rockets and grenades, hitting the buildings on the other side, but without dealing to much damage.

The Blood Pack continued to fire, as most of the mercenary charged across the empty space, as a loud, summing sound filled the air after they had nearly reached the other side.

A heavy, hover tank, one of most advanced vehicles in the Helghast arsenal, appeared out of one of the streets and aimed his main weapon at the charging enemies.

It fired a single shot and the detonation of the hitting slug already killed a large number of Blood Pack soliders, while the rest got under heavy fire.

Assault rifles, LMGs and other weapons opend fire out of windows, cracks in the wall or from behind the tank, mowing down the attackers until only small group was left.

A single, surviving Krogan wanted to ram the tank, but a shot of electricity stopped him and made him shake violently before he fall on the ground, completly cooked by an VC5 Arc Rifle.

All of this had only taken maybe two minutes, but nearly all attackers were dead now, even those who had layed down suppresive fire had been killed by Helghast snipers.

"So much for infiltrating." Garrus mumbeld after he had observed the massacre, calling this a firefight would be wrong since not even a single Helghast had been even wounded.

"Maybe I'll have more luck trying the sewerage." Garuss thought has searched for another way to entry, getting massacared by the Helghast was nothing too promising.

"What is an Shadow Marshall like you doing here ?" a Helghast soldier pointed his pistol at the backhead of an human, who wore a long hoodie and had tried to gain acsses to the sewerage.

"I don't know what you mean, I'm supposed to work here, nothing more." he lied, of course he was a Shadow Marshall and had tried to gain acsess and all he needed was a little chance to get rid of this soldier.

The sound of another weapon caught their attention, as a pistol was pressed on the Helghasts temple, as Garrus threatend her.

"I don't know what you two are doing here, but I want get into this sewers and I won't let you kill this man." the Turian said and the Helghast smiled, although noone saw it.

"Who said that I wanted to kill him ?" the disortion of the soldiers, which the gas mask caused, disappeared and revealed a far too soft and feminine voice, a voice the other human knew.

"Echo ?" she smiled as the Shadow Marshall recognized her, she had knewn who he was from the beginning.

"Lukas Kellan, why do I keep on meeting you in such places." Echo now putted away her gun and a confused Garrus did the same.

"Who the hell are you two ? " Garrus confusion became even larger as Lukas removed his hoodie, revealing his body armour and equipment.

"I could ask you the same question Turian, no person who is armed like you would ever help an stranger here on Omega." Echo replied, she didn't want to give away her identity to a stranger Turian, something Kellan sometimes doesn't seem to care about.

"First Lieutenant Lukas Kellan, Shadow 7 of the Shadow Marshal Corp and you must be the infamous new Spectre Garrus Vakarian." Garrus felt emberrased, he knew that his reputation was not to good, but to be directly recognized like this was no good sign.

"Yes, thats right." he simply mumbeld in replay , before Echo asked them :

"What are a Spectre and a Shadow Marshall doing here on Omega and why do you want get acsess to the sewers ?" Garrus hestitated to give an answer, he didn't like this situation and he didn't want to tell them anything, although they had all now lowerd their weapons.

"I would say that that we want to do the same for what you are here. Getting acsess and gather as much information about the Black Hand as possible." Kellan had meet Echi on several other mission, sometimes they had had the same objective and cooperated and sometimes they had nearly killed each other, so he knew a little about her.

Garrus was suprised and directly asked the question that botherd him now :

"Why should you want to gather information about the Helghast troops on Omega, shouldn't your goverment know everything about them ?" both Kallem and Echo shared a short look at each other, it was obvious that the Citadel didn't knew that much about Helghast politics or at least didn't tell their Specters much about it.

"First of all, yes it seemds that we all share the same goal, we want to infiltrate the Black Hands terretory. And second, no, 'my' goverment does not know everything about the Black Hand."

Lukas now smiled a little and adressed both the Turian and Echo :

"The three of us have the same mission and we are all no friend of the Black Hand, maybe we could cooperate ." Garrus could only laugh about this idea, why should he trust those humans ?

"Tell me, Shadow Marshall, why should I trust you or your Helghast friend ?" of course, the Turian wouldn't trust them, why should he ?

The relations betwenn the ISA and the Citadel were not bad but not very good either, esspecially the Asari still held grudge agains all humans, although they had helped during the attack on Falos.

But this had only happend because the commanding Asari officer had ignored Thessia Commands orders and helped the ISA, for which she had lost her post.

Helghast-Council realtions were terrible, it was a wonder that there was even still a Helghast represantive on board of the Citadel.

"Because neither me nor Echo have killed you until now, although I could have done this easily while you were busy watching the Blood Pack getting massacared." Garrus mouth nearly dropped on the ground, he had been completly sure that nobody had noticed him since he had killed the two guards.

But to be honest, what other choice did he have ?

He needed to cooperate with these two humans if he wanted to finish his mission nad killing them was no option either.

"Alright you've convinced me, we can infiltrate the Helghast terretory together, but neither our superiors nor anyone else will get to know about this." Garrus condition was nothing to argue about, of course their cooperation would be kept secret, esspecially the Helghast would not like to see cooperation between their agents and aliens.

The lock which blocked the entry to the sewerage broke apart under the brute force of Kellans foot and the small group enterd the pipes.

The pipes were hardly high enough for them to walk kneeling, slowly and carefully making their way through these wet surroundings.

None of them spoke a word while they made their way towards the Helghast districts, Kellan formed their vanguard, Echo in the middle and Garrus as the rearguard, since he didn't trust the humans and Echo didn't see him as a threat.

It took them half an hour until they had finally enterd the district, moving even slower than before, as they could hear the steps of Black Hand soldiers above them, stopping every time a patrol passed over them.

Finally, Kellan gave them a handsign, before he walked into a small niche, in which a ladder went upwards.

The Shadow Marshall climbed up and finally gave them a sign to follow, after he had made sure that everything was clear.

It only took a few seconds until they had left the pipes and dissappeared into a nearby empty building, only a moment before another patrol passed by.

" I'm sure that I've seen something." one of the soldier mumbeld, as his comrade replied annoyed

" Stop drinking this batarian beer dude. The Captain will kill you if he finds out that you drink this shit and you will also stop hallucinating." the first soldier seemed to be a little upset now, so he kept quiet and simply followed his comrade.

They waited for a minute, until they were sure that nobody was there anymore, before Echo told them :" We need to avoid the main streets, Black Hand drones and patrols are observing the whole district. If we keep a low profile and hurry from building to building, we might have a chance to reach one of their local command centers and hack into their system.

We then download the data we need and make a quick escape, without causing any problems, if we're lucky. "

Both Garrus and Kellan were not completly satisfied by this plan and the Turian also still had something that botherd him.

"Before we start this suicidal operation, I need to ask you something.

I can understand why a Shadow Marshall is here and tries to gather information, but why a Helghast agent like you ?

I mean you goverment supports the Black Hand, shouldn't they know everything about them ?"

Echo didn't like this question, her annoyed look made it clear, but she also needed the Turians support.

"What I'm now telling to you is beyond Top Secret and will be denied by every goverment offical you will ever met.

The official goverment of the Helghast Dominion has not much real power, their are only used as to appease the masses and to have somebody those who are really in power can blame if something goes wrong.

Until 10 years ago, two man had all the power within the Dominion in their hands.

Admiral Orleck, as the High commander of all Helghast forces and Jorhan Stahl, the great weapon producer.

They had together brought down Autarch Visari and ended the last war, to get this power.

Ten years ago, Admiral Orleck died and most of his followers are now loyal to Stahl, while a small number has pleged their allegiance to Chairman Hera Visari, the offical head of the Dominion.

The Black hand is loyal to Stahl, he uses him as his second personal army, since his real private army has to be limited officaly." Garrus had to admit that he no idea how Helghast politics worked and his face showed it clearly, so Echo went on.

"Stahl needs to appease the Helghast people, most of the generals may be loyal to him, but without the people he's powerless, since he's not as charismatic as Visari used to be."

Most of the higher ups in the various goverments knew who was really in power on Helghast, but the state propaganda of the Domionion blocked most information from outside and the civillians from other nations did not really care about the politics of a small power like Helghan.

"Ok, so those soldiers are no offical part of the Helghast army, understood. And it won't cause any problem if we kill them, only if necessary, of course." Garrus was right and Echo only replied:

"For you two yes, for me. Let's say Stahl won't like the fact that an agent of Hera Visari kills his men."

Kellan had stayed silent this whole time, he knew everything he needed to know, Echo had not said anything he didn't knew already.

"Ok, enough storytelling, we have a mission to finish. Echo you will stay on the roofs and cover us from there, while I and... ähm whats your name again my friend ?" only now Lukas realiced that he didn't even knew the name of his ally and Garrus only replied :

"My names Garrus Vakarian." while he got ready to move out.

"Alright Garrus and me will make our way through the streets, we will enter the Black Hands command center and then share the data afterwards, they won't notice Echo like this."

normally Echo would never have accepted this offer, trusting an enemy agetn was stupid at best, but Kellan was different, they had met each other several times before and he had proven that he was trustworthy.

"Alright, I'll cover you, but now lets finally move out." she hurried up the stairs of the building, while Garrus and Lukas went out on the streets.

They hurried throught the narrow alleys, carefully avoiding every patrol they could, except for those two, poor soldiers who they had kill silently, since they wouldn't leave their positions.

Echo stayed invisible, but her regular comments via radio showed them that she was still watching and covering them.

"So, Lukas." Garrus started while they maded a short break, after they had made sure that noone was nearby, " your a Shadow Marshall, right ? Mind telling me why the ISA sended you here ?" Garrus knew why Echo was here but Kellan had given no real answer until now, so he used this peaceful moment to ask .

"Well, Garrus. The Helghast and my goverment may have cooperated during the invasion of Illium, but we are still in a cold war, noone has forgotten the last war.

The Dominion tries to increase its power by expanding into the Terminus and I am here to stop them, since they will for sure attack the ISA again once they fell strong enough.

I guess you're here for the same reason, irght ?".

The Turian chuckeld a little, the human was right, the Council also wanted to stop the Helghast expansion inside the Terminus, this data he was suppoused to gather would be given to the Batarians so that they could start their operation against the Black Hand..

"You're right, we also want to stop the Helghast, but nobody wants to risk an open war against some crazy warmongers." Lukas nooded in agreement, everbody in the ISA military knew what it meant to underrestimate the Helghast, millions of soldiers had died when they tried to invade Helghan, just to get completly crushed.

Helghast was a fortress world, with hundreds of ant-space guns and millions of soldiers defending it, ready to die for their home.

"Yeah, so lets get this mission done, so we won't have to fight an open war." the Turian grunted as they kept on moving, since it was only a short way towards their destination.

It was an unsuspecting building, the only thing conspicuous was the small group of soldiers standing in front of it and a larger number waited inside for sure.

"We can't avoid those assholes for sure." Garrus mumbeld, as Lukas radioed Echo :" Echo, any other entry for us, this ones a little crowded." a soft, female voice responded and told them what they didn't want to hear.

"I'm sorry, but you'll have to make some noice. I can stop any reinforcements for maybe ten minutes, so you'll have to be fast.".

"Not a good idea." the Turian protested , but Kellan already aimed his assault rifle at the Helghasts.

"I'll take the right side, you the left and a nice grenade into the middle." the Turian had to accept it, so pulled out his Phaeston and took aim, while his human companion now throwed a small, round object at the soldiers, which stormed apart once they stopped it, just a moment before it exploded and two moments before Kellan and Garrus opend fire.

It only took a few moments until the last guard was down and they could hurry towards the door, but Garrus only slammed his fist against it.

"Bulletproof and sealed and we don't have any explosive charge to open it." he grunted, but Lukas only replied with a playfull smile, before he pulled out his favourite weapon.

"What strange prototype is this thing ? " the Turian mumbeld, as distant gunshots made it clear that Echo was now stopping the reinforcements.

"This, my turian friend, is the LSR 44 Spoor, the best f***ing weapon in the whole galaxy." the human pressed a button on the strange weapon, which enlarged a little, before it obviously started to charge up.

A blue light emitted out of the open coils of the weapon, before Kellan aimed it at the doors massive lock and fired.

A massive shot of blue plasma shoot out of the weapon, simply melting the lock and nearly half of the door with it.

Garrus mouth was wide open, he had never seen a weapon like this, nor had he imagined that any nation in the galaxy had the ability to build something like this.

"Its a rail gun, quite similiar to your weapons, but it fires plasma in difference to yours. But this charged up shot empties half of the magazine." they now got ready to storm into the building, as Kellan finished his explanation :

"Oh yes, the charged up mode is meant for sniping. This gun is an assault rifle and a sniper rifle in just a single weapon."

Lukas threw another grenade into the building and stormed inside once he heared the loud bang, followed by Garrus.

Kellan changed the mode of weapon again, it shortend a little and the scope went back into the gun, before he fired a few burst into the hallway.

The plasma bullets were alot smaller than the charged up shoot from before, but the precise shoots took out the poor soldiers who still tried to stop them.

The Turian watched suprised as his mandibles slowly drifted apart, this gun was amazing.

"Is there the possibility that I can get such a gun, too. My friend." Garrus called after the human, who only replied with a laughter,

"Grow some hair and put on some moisturizer, maybe them." the Turian had to chuckel a little too, before he followed the human.

They would get the data in no time.

Chapter 4 End

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><p>Authors note:Well Kellan has a nice gun and Garrus wants it ^^.<p>

But I hope you like how i showed them until now, focus will be mainly on Garrus and Kellan after Omega, but I won't spoil to much.


	6. Chapter 5

Greetings dear readers.

I'm still stunned how many people seem to read this little Xover and I hope that I won't dissapoint you.

But now much fun with the next chapter

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><p><strong>Xover: Chronicles of the outer colonies<strong>

**Chapter 5**

**Biting the Hand**

"Enemy sniper, get into cover !" the Black Hand sergeant screamed, just a moment before his head exploded.

Echo was a well trained marksman, although she had to use an unusual weapon, an M-97 Viper she had bought only a few days ago.

Using her own rifle was no option, Black Hand soldiers getting killed by an Helghast rifle would cause too much suspicion, so she had to use this thing.

It was not as good as her old VC32, which was already outdated but still very powerfull, but she got used to the Viper very quickly.

Heavy stomping signaliced her that something big was approaching, an Heavy trooper, elite soldiers who were sealed in a massive bullet-proof and blast-resisting armour and who wieled massive chain guns.

Luckly Echo had already changed her position again, so the Heavy only fired his weapon in the wrong direction, destroing the roof of the building, while she now took position far behind the walking tank, who was accompanied by several troopers.

She now aimed at the red tank on the Heavies back and then emptied the whole magazine into it within a few seconds.

The soldier had already started to turn around, as the last bullet hitted, causing the tank to explode in a large fireball, which also consumend the nearby soldiers.

She wanted to smirk, but something, nothing more than a nearly unnoticeable sound from behind, caught her attention.

She just turned around in time to block a knife which went down on her, stopping it only an inch from her throat away.

"You're fighting on the wrong side." the man who attacked her was no Helghast, which shocked her, he seemed to be asian and had neither the pale skin nor the red eyes which normally characterized the Helghast, although she herself was an exception.

She took together all her strength and slowly pushed the knife away, while the attacker strungeld to force it into the opposite direction.

"Get lost !" she lifted her leg and was able to burry her knee into the attackers lower half, which gave her the possibility to throw him away.

The man needed a second before he had gatherd himself again, but Echo had already pressed her pistol on his template, while she interrogated him :

"Who send you ? You're no Helghast and the Black Hand would never pay any outsider assasins." she was right , the leader of the mercanaries was famous for having a paranoia towards other human faction, so the Black Hand would never trust any outsiders.

The attacker only smiled and Echo was about to pull the trigger, as a bullet missed her head only by luck.

The Black hand soldiers had noticed the little fight and opend fire, giving the attacker the chance to escape.

It only took a second until he had disappeared out of Echos sight, who also ran, to get away from the soldiers.

"I'm sorry, but you guys have to hurry, something has gone wrong and I can't cover you anymore."

Garrus and Lukas got the radio message and the human directly answerd :

" Alright, try to get to safety, we'll meet once we're outside of the Helghast districts again." they had went deep into the Command center and many dead mercenaries now marked their trail.

"We gotta hurry, otherwise we'll have to deal with more than just troopers." Kellan was right, it wouldn't take long for sure until reinforcements arrived and they would for sure bring heavy support.

"Die scum !" they again meet resistance, a group of 4 soldiers blocked the hallway and opend fire, while Garrus and Kellan seeked cover in a small niche, hardly large enough for both of them.

"OWL !" the drone came off the humans back and activated a shield to block the hallway.

"What the...?" Garrus was again suprised by Kellans equipemnt, drones were nothing unsual but this one was emitting an energy shield, something he had never seen or heard of before.

"Less talking more shooting." Lukas opend fire with his Rumbler again, since the shield only blocked fire into one direction and mowed down the suprised soldiers.

"Come on !" he told the Turian, who was still amazed by this little machine, which now followed its owner.

They were only a few feet away from the server room now, only one corridor left and this one was unprotected.

The quickly made their way towards the door and gave each other handsigns, Kellan would break the lock with his favourite rifle again and Garrus would storm into the room, with his barriers fully charged and assault rifle ready.

They couldn't use grenades since they could damage their objective, so this had to work.

A charged up shoot of plasma melted the lock and Garrus kicked it open, as he stormed into the room.

Only single soldier was inside, sitting in front of the computers.

The man reached for the keyboard, obviously trying to do something with the machines, so a single bullet into the head stopped the him.

The room was now safe and both of them approached the Pcs, once they had removed the dead body.

"Alright lets download the data... This thing doesn't have any accses points for Omni-tools, right ?" Kellan smiled about the Turian.

Many might have considerd the Helghasts tech primitive, but its analog structure made it completly save from most hackers, since they needed a physical acsess to enter the system.

Omni-tools hade no such thing and even UNSC Ais needed to be directly attatched to those machines, but luckly Kellan was prepared.

The ISA had also started to use Omni-tools, mostly rather primitive copies of the models they had gatherd during the First Contact conflict, but those still had physical acsess points and Kellan connented his own to the computer, with a simple cable.

The Helghast had nearly no Cyber defence in their system, since they didn't expect any attacks, so Lukas could quickly download the needed data.

"Here's the data." Kellan send the needed datas on Garrus Omni-tool once he was done and it took long seconds, something Garrus was not used to.

"Your Omni-tools are still quite slow, right ?" the Turian commented and the human had to admit that he was right.

But finally it was done and Kellan now pulled an small USB-stick out of his tool, commenting on it :" An copy for Echo."

They now hurried out of the building as fast as possible, but they were stopped the moment they had left it, as Kellan tored his turian companion behind a wall, just in time to avoid an flame shoot meant for them.

"Dammit, do these guys really have every god damm weapon ?" Kellan screamed, as he spotted the two trooper carriers, which now took them under fire.

Those vehicles resembeld spiders a little, they were quadpedel and resembeld predators , they had an flamethrower attached to their "chin" and a mortar on their "back" right next to the armoured box, in which 4 Helghast troopers could be transported.

Those vehicles were only used by elite-soldiers, meant to carry small squads of veterans through every kind of terrain and with a speed unmatched by any conventional APCs.

Those vehicles were already hard to destroy, but the 8 assault troopers which jumped out of them made it even worse.

Those soldiers were not the regular light infantry they had fought until now, they were elites, heavily armoured in silver metal plates, which coverd their whole body and armed with best weapons the Helghast could afford.

But the first of them already went down as his skull was crushed by Garrus precise headshot, while the rest forced them back into cover, with their precise fire.

"Any ideas ?" Garrus screamed towards the human, who could also do nothing else but duck behind the cover, as bullets only missed them by inches.

"Fire until all Helghast are dead or we run out of ammo." Lukas screamed as he returned fire awith a short burst, before he went into cover again.

"Unitl you run out of ammo ." Garrus commented sarcasticly, his weapons could not run out of bullets, only overheat.

"Doesn't matter my turian friends, the Helghast will for sure not care about a single gun with infinite ammunition." the Helghast slowly closed the distance between them and their prey, since the troop carrier still forced their enemies behind cover.

"No grenades left, how are we supposed to do anything against thos things ?" Garrus hoped that Kellan had an idea what to do, the ISA afterall knew nearly everything about the Helghast military,

but the human only shoke his head in responce, normally you needed extrem luck to hit any vulnerable parts of those vehicles, but taking out more than one of them with any heavy ordonace was pure suicide.

"Come one you got to be kidding ." they were really running out of luck, as the sound of large engines became hearble and Helghast strike craft approached them from behind.

The Strike craft was the standard fighter plane, able to operate both in space and on planets.

They were larger and bulkier than other machines, but it was incredible agile and heavily armed and could even be used as a small dropship, since it had a small room for passengers behind the co-pilots seat.

But this didn't matter at the moment, since two machine-cannons were now aimed at them and got ready to fire.

"You don't happen to have any shoots from your plasma gun left ?" maybe a charged up blast of plasma would have given them at least a small chance to survive, but sadly Kellan had already emptied ever energy cell he had.

"Well seems like this is our end my friend. It's been an honour to serve with you." Kellans words sounded like a bad clliche and both of them had to admit that it took the Helghast pilot quite long to kill them.

The Strike craft simply hoverd in front of them and now Lukas finally recognized how piloted this machine.

"Echo ?" both the human and the turian were suprised, but positiv, as the machine-cannons finally came to life, mowing down the Assaul troopers, before two rockets also finished the troop carriers.

Echo now hoverd in front of the two and opend the small back flap of the Strike craft, while she told them : " jump in or do you want to wait for more of them to come ?"

They wouldn't reject this order and enterd the small room, which had nothing more than two rows of small seats to sit on, while an opening on the other side lead towards the co-pilot seat.

Kellan directly stromed to this position and took it , while Garrus tried to sit down on the seats.

It was not very comfortable for humans but for Turians it was nearly impossible to sit on those things.

"Get a hold on something Garrus !" Kellan screamed, just a moment before Echo raised the machine into the air again, sending Garrus flying through the passenger room.

The Turian thanked every god he knew that the Turian bone structure was strong enough to withstand this, a human would have had every bone broken by this, he would only get alot bruises and squashings.

"How do we plan to get out of here ?" Kellan asked, as he started to fire the secondary, moveable machine guns at the following Black Hand machines.

"Break through, make an emergency landing and then dissappear again, just like that mission in the Blue Sun factory." Kellan knew very well what the woman was talking about.

2 years ago, when he was still a newbie, he had been tasked to infiltrate a small Blue Suns controlled factory on New Falos, gathering information about their influence on the independent colony.

He had met Echo their for the first time and had nearly been killed by her , before they decided to work together, since Echo was supposed to get informations, too.

In the end they used a Codiac shuttle to break through a closing gate, crashed only half a mile outside the factory and then seperated and used the first shuttle they could find to leave, with the data they wanted.

So they now charged towards the district border, while Garuss had finally been able to strap himslef on .

He let out a reliefed sigh, just to get shaken heavily as a machine-cannon shell hitted on of the engines, destroying it and sending the machine nearly down.

They had already reached the border and they hardly made it over the dead zome, before the they crashed into a storage buildings roof, breaking through it.

All passenders were shaken heavily, but they remained conscious, thanks to Echos supreme piloting skills.

She and Lukas now jumped out of the broken front window, while Garrus stumbeld after them, not feeling very well.

Dozens of mercenaries hurried to the crash site, maybe they could kill some Helghast there, but they were disappointed since they couldn't even find a corpse, before the machine exploded and killed 3 unlucky Vorchas.

Echo already hurried through the back streets again and Lukas, who was helping Garrus, how had emptied his stomach after the ride, tried to keep up to hear.

" Goodbye Kellan, let's hope we won't see each other too soon." she stopped for a second and adressed the Shadow Marshall, before she dissappered in a nearby crowd, while Lukas had to stay hidden .

He looked after her for a minute , before Garrus got back on his feet and asked :

"So we made it out and got the data, seems like we'll seperate too, my friend." Garrus already wanted to leave, but Kellan now rememberd something crucial about his mission.

He had been supposed to only infiltrate and prepare a mission which was really meant to get the data, but well, he had been sucessesfull.

But their was one problem, he was meant to leave the station together with the reinforcements and those would still take a week to come and even he couldn't stay unnoticed for this long.

"Well, Garrus, you don't happen to have a free seat on you ride to the Citadel ?" the Turian stopped in his tracks, not sure if he had heared correctly and then turned to the human, who had already thrown his hoodie over again.

"You have nothing to leave this goddamm garbage pit ?" what sort of soldier was this human, he had trusted an alien, unknown agent and now he asked this very agent for a ride ?

"Well, my original mission was to infiltrate the districta and prepare everthing for an following team, not directly storm the Black Hands command center." Garrus eyes opend wide in amazement, did Lukas just admit that he ahd violated hsi orders ?

"Well you and Echo both wanted to get the data, so I thought that I could do this together with you two and save work for the other Marshalls. So do you have a seat for me ?" Garrus looked at the human for another second, he still couldn't believe this, but then he turned around again and answerd : "Maybe there's something you can fit in, come with me." Kellan smiled for a second in responce, before he hurried after the Turian.

Lukas was a strange human, a strange person, but Garrus couldn't argue about the fact that he started to like the Shadow Marshall.

They now hurried to one of the more remote hangars of Omega, where a small Hierachy freighter was waiting for them.

The guard already wanted to stop Kellan but Garrus signaliced him that everything was alright.

"Let's hope they have somet non-turian food on board, otherwise you'll lose a few pounds until we're in the Citadel." Garrus joked and Lukas was thankful for the fact that he had still at least one military ration left in his armors pockets.

Like the guard the whole crew of the small ship was turian and looked at Kellan shocked, but Garrus presence at least showed them that everything was alright.

The Spectre directly hurried to the captain to tell him that they could leave, while Kellan found a free space where he could at least sit down until they reached the Citadel.

He would go to the embassy and give them the data, but now, the moment he sat down, exhaustion took over and it only took a moment until he had fallen assleep, leaning against the wall.

It took the ship three days to reach the Citadel and Lukas and Garrus departed the moment the Spectre had brought him through C-Secs controlls.

"Thanks for the help Garrus, my friend." Lukas offerd his hand to say goodbye and Garrus took it happily.

"I hope well see each other again Lukas and not on the battlefield. I know a nice bar with even nicer Asari dancers, we could drink something there once you are here without a mission." Lukas smiled in responce and told the Turian, while he was already leaving:

"Sounds nice, I'll let you hear of me once I get some vacation." he had had no free time for the last two years and he was a fraid that this would also bee the case in this year.

He now hurried through the presidium and some eyes followed him, humans were no common sight on the Citadel, althought many companies from Vekta had stores on the station.

Lukas aim was clear and it only took him a few minutes before he reached the ISA embassie, a small building guarded by small group of ISA-Marines.

The soldiers saluted Lukas once they recognized him and let him pass, while he was already awaited .

Inside already several people awaited him, ambassador Duran, an over 50 years old, small man, with steel grey hair and small, tired eyes.

He had been on the Citadel for 5 years now and slowly became tired of the whole political bullshit.

He was accompanied by his assistant, Sarah Jackson, a young and determined woman who was doing everything she could to replace Duran.

The third and last person was Luger, the personal guard of Duran and one of the first and still most skilled Shadow Marshalls.

She wore a balaclava and green night vision goggles, so her face was not visible but Lukas knew to well how his old teacher looked underneath.

"Welcome Lukas, its good to see that you are alright." Duran greeted him and the soldier only replied with a nood, before he started to type on his Omni-tool.

"Those are all data I have been able to steal from the Black Hand." the ISA Omni-tools were rather primitive compared to their Citadel counterpart, so it took a few moments before Duran had recieved everything.

He took a few moments to get an overview and then resonded :

"Alright Lukas, those datas are really important, I will directly contact High Command and tell them everything. " the diplomat now turned away and Lukas stood there for a few moments, waiting for somebody to dismiss him.

Obviously Luger enjoyed it to let her former student wait, but after two minutes she decided to release him from the pain.

"Come with me boy. I gotta talk with you." she walked past him towards one of the buildings balconys and the younger Marshall followed her directly.

"Sinclair is not happy with what you did ." she told him, once they were out of the civillians sight, to which Lukas replied

" I got the data, thats all that should matter. Now he can send the team somewhere else." Kellan was right, afterall it had been their their long-time goal to get the data, but Luger knew that this wouldn't mean to much for Sinclair.

The Commander of the Shadow Marshall Corps may be Kellans foster father, but still he didn't

accept anything but obedience from every single Marshall, even if they had sucsess.

"He won't do much more than giving you a long speech this time, but only because you were sucessfull. But he won't accept it another time." Luger didn't like how Sinclair lead the Corps, pure obedience was something for Helghast, not commando ISA soldiers.

Lukas only listend with one ear, it was nothing new for him to get lectured, he may be one of the best Marshalls but he was also known for beeing stubborn at time.

Luger looked at him for a moment and sighed, before she went on :

"Sinclair wants us to be completly loyal to him and only him, you know what I mean." Lukas hated this topic, but his old teacher was right.

Sinclair saw the Marshalls as his private army and not only the Marshalls, the whole Vekta Security Agency, short VSA, the vektan garrison, was under his command and he tried to make them loyal to only him.

"I don't care about politics Luger, I'll do my missions and try to protect the ISA and its people." Lukas was still full of idealism, believing that he could protect the peace within the galaxy.

"Just remember one thing." Luger now turned to go back into the building, while she adressed him for a last time " Sinclairs decisions are not always in favor of everybody, don't become a mindless tool."

Garrus had also brought the data to the council until now and their plan would now set in motion, an offensive to crush the Black Hands influence.

Many of the data may be worthless, since the Black Hand would give up their know uncoverd bases, but they were vulnerable while they relocated their infrastructure.

The Batarian Hegenomy would start an massive attack on the Helghast, together with the other mercanary groups, once the Black Hand gave them an excuse for it.

And they did, a small batarian convoy was accidently attacken by an Black Hand battlegroup and the Batarians directly declared open war against them, although they apologiced officaly.

Black Hand command center, Terminus world Norak two weeks after the incident

Every high ranking commander of the Black hand had gatherd in this small room today, together with their leader Vladko Tyran, who was standing next to some holographs.

"Comrades, the situation is looking bad. It seems that we have underrestimated this batarian scum, their fleet is pushing into our terretory and we can hardly stop them.

They have crushed two of our battlegroups, we lost nearly 20 ships and took away three worlds we controlled until now.

Aria T'Loaks mercenarie also started an offense in Omega, our forces there gave up 2 districts to shorten the frontline, but could also deal heavy casualties to our enemies.

We can't them any reinforcements at the moment, they need to hold out with what they have, while ewe regroup for an counterattack. Several ships are currently under protection of Dominion outposts, the Batarians won't dare to anger the goverment."

the commander nooded in agreement, thast situation was bad, but they could stabalice it for sure, with the additional supply Stahl promised them.

But to their luck, some Batarians didn't care about the difference between the Black hand and the offical Helghast goverment.

One of them was the commanding officer off an batarian cruiser flottile, which had pursued a single Black Hand frigate to an Dominion outpost.

The commander didn't care care or didn't know about the difference, he opend fire on the outpost, oblitarating it completly.

The next day the Helghast Dominion offically declared war against the Batarian Hegenomy, sparking a conflict which would soon be known as the 1st Terminus war.

Chapter 5

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><p>Colonial Intelligence Entry # 10000020029<p>

The "Great Improvement":

The " Improvement and Expansion of the ISA militaries defensive and offensive capabilities", for short the "Great Improvemnt" was a policy enacted after the terrible attack on Falos.

It increased the military spending massivly and forced the colonies to pay addittional taxes, to finance them.

Thomas Sinclair was one of the most prominent supporters of this policy, he enlarged the Shadow Marshall Corps and the VSA even more than the rest of the military.

The quality of the ISA troops has increased greatly and they are now able to fight most opponents equally, although their reputation is still terrible.

The ISA fleet has now twice as many ships as they had during first contact, 300 Damocles-cruisers and 7 Dreadnoughts.

Many argued against the policy since it increased the power of the goverment and dangerd the colonies autonomy, but the majority still believes that its necessary, to prevent another Falos.

* * *

><p>Authors Note: So the Omega mission is over and a sucsess, while a new war start in the Terminus.<p>

And just for those who ask. The UNSC is simply not interrested in the Citadel at the moment, they will keep out of this politic mess as long as they can, since they are busy with other stuff *points at ONI and Cerberus*


	7. Chapter 6

Greetings people. The holidays are over and finally I finished a new chapter. Much fun reading it.

* * *

><p><strong>Xover: Chronicles of the outer colonies<strong>

**Chapter 6**

Many Problems

"Keep on attacking you useless scum !" the Krogan battlemaster sreamed, as he forced his Vorcha soldiers to keep on attacking, while they got mowed down by the Black Hands fire.

Hundreds if not thousands of Blood pack mercenaries tried to break through the Helghast line of defense and they were near their goal, although hundreds Vorcha had already died and they slowly ran out of troops.

They used the Vorcha as living shields, behind which the krogan troopers attacked, slowly decimating the Black hands soldiers.

The Blood Pack had finally established an bridgehead on the other side and several bruning tank wrecks showed that the Black Hand had already lost much of its heavy support.

Only a handfull of soldiers was left and every wave of attackers decimated them even more, esspecially the Krogans were nearly unbeatable without vehicles or heavy weapons.

The battle had went on for hours now and the defenders couldn'r expect any reinforcements, since every major faction on Omega was currently attacking the Black Hands districts.

And finally, a radio message told the soldiers that they could leave this massacre.

"We'll shorten the frontline. Give up the district." they had no vehicles left, so they had to retreat by foot, while still fighting back the Blood Packs attack.

Not many of them would survive.

The Black hands Commanders had not expected such a large offensive, they knew that something needed to happen after the attack on the outer command post, but this was just beyond imagination.

Everybody on Omega, who was able to wield a gun, stormed on them and they couldn't count on any reinforcements from out of Omega, since the Batarians attacked every Black Hand station in the Terminus.

So they now shortend the frontline and gave up several position, so that they could at least hold a small part of Omega.

They needed to hold out, since they knew that their situation would soon improve, once the Dominion would start its counterattack.

Planet Helghan, Senate Building

"I don't want this war Ivan." Hera Visari, who was now woman in her early fifties walked throught the halls of the Helghast Senate, escorted by her loyal bodyguard.

Ivan Radek and his men were some of the few people she could completly trust and she spoke honestly with him, since she was sure that nobody listend.

"It will only strengthend Stahl even more. Now he can use the regular military to support his mercanaries and increase their influence." hate was audible in her voice, she hated the old weapon manufacture more than anything else.

He had betryed her father and killed him and had only spared her, to use her as a puppet.

"Your Guard will only listen to your order chancellor, no matter what Stahl does." Hera smiled at him for a moment, while Ivans emotions were hidden behind his gas mask.

"Stahl has asked for you and your soldiers and I can't deny him, he would use this to discredit me."

"So the soldiers, who had tried to damage the Black Hand whenever they could, are now supposed to fight side by side with them ?" Ivan knew the answer to this question, but he stopped for a second and checked his surrounding.

"Maja." he mumbeld, not audible for Hera, before he followed her again.

"Yes Ivan. We have no other choice."

Hera now opend the door to her private room and signaliced Ivan that he was dismissed and the soldier used this to chase after the observer.

Echo knew that she could not escape her old man, so she didn't even flinch as he approached her from behind, a few seconds later.

"It's not right father." normally Echo was not allowed to call him her father during the work, but they were alone and Ivan accepted it.

"That's not important Maja, we are soldier off the chancellor and follow her orders, you know why." he was right, Hera Visari was the only person who stood up against Stahl and his followerd, the only one who tried to protect the people of Helghast and argued for peace.

They had to protect her, total war against the ISA and the rest of the galaxy would be certain without her.

" I know father." Maja whisperd, she hated this damm situation, working together with Stahls dogs was simply terrible, those assholes, who make everybody see the Helghast as mainiacs and warmongers.

"I heard rumors that you had assistance during your last mission, some say you worked together with a Shadow Marshall and a Specter." Maja was shocked, how did he knew, but then she rememberd, her father had always found his ways.

"Maybe father, maybe not. All that matters it that I fullfiled my mission, although the data won't have any use now." Ivan waited for a moment, he knew too well that Echo had cooperated with this one Shadow Marshall more than once, but he would trust her, as long as she fullfiled her duty.

"As long as you don't fall in love with them." Radek mumbeld, as he turned and marched away.

A slight hint of red was visible on Echos face, before she also left, heading for her home.

She had just come back from Omega and was tired, she needed sleep and a shower.

The same day Phyrus square

Phyrus square was a gigantic place in the middle of the Helghast capital, meant for parades and great festivities.

Today 20000 Helghast soldiers filled it, standing in perfect squares, not even moving a muscle, while dropships and Strike Crafts flew over them.

Field Marshall Marek, a man how had already served as a young captain during the last war, a loyal follower of Stahl, a man mostly known by his nickname "Helghans Hammer".

He stood on a large podium and started his speech, which was meant to ready the soldiers and people of Helghan.

"People of Helghan, my dear comrades, for the longest time we have accepted the alien scum which waits behind our borders, for the longest time have we watched how they killed our brothers and enslaved out sisters.

Today is the day, the beginning of a new future, a future in which we will never ever accept any four-eyed bastards next to our worlds.

We will crush every slaver, every pirate and everybody who tries to damage our great nation, no matter how they call themself or from which god forsaken garbage pit they come.

We once had to run from dirty aliens and hide in the shadows, but no more, never again will we bow before them, today we will rise and crush them underneath out feet, like the insects the really are !

For Helghan, for the Dominion !"

"For Helghan !" thousands of voice screamed this words and some could think that the whole planet would hear them, every other noice simply dissappeared.

The Helghast marched to war and nothing would stop them.

The speech was transmitted into the whole known galaxy, millions if not billions followed it, afraid of what was to come.

Esspecially the people on the Citadel were shocked, for centuries there had been no real war, some smaller conflicts but nothing of this size.

But nearly everybody on the station was sure how this conflict would end, the Batarians outnumberd the Helghasts massivly, it would be a short conflict, but still more than they were used to.

They had no idea what the Helghast were capable of, all they had seen until now were the Black hands mercenaries and the light infantry that had attacked Illium.

Of course they had seen an MAWLR in action, but they couldn't imagine that a nation as small as the dominion could muster a large fleet or an army capable of fighting any major power.

But soon the Batarians would learn a hard lesson.

"This is Admiral Hrak, to all ships we are under attack." the Batarians had not expected this.

A large fleet, at least 35 ships guarded on of the Hegenomies main supply stations in the Terminus, a large space station meant for rearming and refuelling their battleships, one of their most important positions in the whole sector.

The fleet had scatterd around the whole station and nearby planet, making sure that no pirate would be able to sneek his way through their lines.

But now this decision proved to be a fatal mistake for them.

Two small Helghast battlegroups, each only numbering 10 heavy frigates, had charged at them and overwhelmed the ships guarding the station and them split apart.

One battlegroup started to bombard the station, while the second charged into the approaching batarian ships, causing chaos.

The Helghast were fast and heavily armed, those ships were not even half as large as a ISA crusier but still destroyed the batarian cruisers with ease.

They were nothing like the ships the Helghast Dominion normally used, the older models were slow and primitive, meant to overwehelm with numbers, but this new ships were different.

They had new engines, copied from the sampels they had gatherd on Illium, making then fast and agile, just like the frigates used by the Citadel-races.

Those ships now charged into their enemies and fired their ark-cannons, large weapons which simply fire a large mass of energy, from point-black range.

The barriers offerd no resistance and withing a few minutes ten batarian ships were reduced to bruning wrecks.

Hraks fleet now finally managed to strike back, reformed their ranks and already destroyed 3 Helghast frigates, as the supply station turned into a fireball.

The Admiral cursed the Helghast and wanted to crush their ships, using his mighty dreadnought, but the Helghasts the first battlegroup already jumped out of the system and the second got ready to leave, too.

"Don't let them escape, kill them." he screamed but it was to late, they could only destroy 2 more ships, before the rest jumped out of the system again.

Hrak and his soldiers were shocked, it had only taken half an hour and half or their fleet and the supply station was destroyed, while all they could do was sinking 5 attacking ships, not much compared to their loses.

The people of the Citadel should be right, the war took only a few weeks, but not in the Batarians favour.

They had spread out their superior fleet across their whole spehere of influence, making it easy for the inferior Helghast to take them apart.

Everbody was shocked about the Helghast speed, they used local superioty and speed to decimate the Batarians before they could react properly.

The Batarians tried to gather their forces, but the Helghast had already destroyed nearly all of their logistic infrastructure within the Terminus, limiting their range massivly.

But the greatest humiliation didn't happen in the Terminus, it happend directly at their home, as a large frigate squadron appeared right in front of their main shipping yard, pushed through the shocked and unprepared defenders and shot everything they could on the station.

They then charged past them and simply jumped away, damaging the shipping yard heavily and crippiling it for a long time.

The aftereffects of this attacks were even worse, suddenly the Hegenomy realiced that the Helghast could attack their main worlds and pulled most of their remaining troops out of the Terminus.

Now the few remaining units had no chance to even challange the Helghast forces which pushed into the Terminus.

The war ended quickly afterwards, both sides accepting a white peace, but in reality the Helghast had achieved a great victory.

The Batarians, who until then had been one of the dominating powers within the Terminus, had lost nearly all of their influence, while the Black Hand and with them the Dominion, had replaced them.

It was the worst outcome the ISA could have imagined, Helghast looses during this war were minimal, two dozen ships and maybe a thousand soldiers, while Black Hands looses were higher, they were nothing compared to their oppoenents.

The Batarian fleet had lost 50 of their ships and over tenthousand soldiers, while the mercanariy groups had nearly cased to exsist, they had lost an immense amount of troops during their suicidal offense against the Black Hands positions.

Now Arias men were the only thing stopping the Helghsat from taking over Omega, while nobody else from the Terminus even dared to challenge the Helghasts.

This was also the reason why the ISAs ambassador the Council had a secret meeting, to discuss this unpleasant turn of effents.

"We told you that the Helghasts won't be beaten easily, you gave them a reason to send the regular military and they took it." the ISAs represantive was right, everybody had hoped that they could crush the Black hand with this operation, but the opposite had happend.

The council had not been able to support the Batarians, since they were the offical aggresor against the Helghasts and the UNSC wouldn't have accepted an unprovoked intervention.

Too be honest, the UNSC was the only thing which currently stopped everybody from going all out against the Helghast and sending them back to hell.

Earth didn't even like the Helghast, but they wouldn't accept such a drastic challange to the balance of power.

Until now the USNC had kept itself out of the Citadels affair, Earth was still busy rebuilding lost colonies, Reach had only been resetteled a few years ago and their fleets mostly hunted down the remaining Covenant cells.

They only kept an eye on the independent colonies, making sure that they didn't ally themself with any aliens or grew too strong.

But Earth was not important at the moment, the ISA and the Council had an common enemy and they needed to cooperate to at least stop the Helghasts influence from growing.

"Hmmpf." the batarian represantive was angerd, but he couldn't deny the truth, the ISA had warned them the whole time that they should be ready for the Dominions counterattack and they had simply ignored it.

"There is no use in blaming each other, the Hegenomy has made a mistake and now the Black Hand dominates the Terminus." Councilor Tevos tried to calm everybody down and Salus, the new Salarian councilor, supported her :

"Yes, we should focus on what we need to do to stop them, otherwise the Helghasts will become even stronger."

"I think its rather easy to push them back, but it will take much time and costs alot, but still less than an all-out war." everybodies eyes now focused on Duran and he went on to explain his plan

"We will force the Helghast to fight a war of attrition. We support the decimated mercanaries, so that they can force the Helghast into a new small-scale war. Add some pirates and slavers to this and it will slowly let the Helghast bleed out.

They may have a large military, but they simply don't have the necessary reserves for a long conflict, they hardly recoverd their looses from the last war, their small population simply can't replace the daed soldiers.

That's why they attack so fast and with only small forces, they simply can't risk their main force."

The councilors liked this idea, although Spartarus believed this strategy to be cowardly, since he preverd the turian way, an open and honourable conflict.

"Its gonna cost a large amount of credits to rebuild the Blue Suns, Ecplise and Blood Pack, they were nearly annihalted in this conflict. New recruits will also be hard to find for them, since nobody likes to see the wrong end of an Helghast rifle." Tevos gatherd all facts in those few sentences and the five persons present agreed on this plan.

This agreement would kept top secret, for obvious reasons and because an offical cooperation between the Citadel and humans would have been very unpopular among the Citadels civillian population.

Many Asari matriachs still wanted human heads for the invasion on Illium, although they had healtly trade relations with the ISA now and the Turians were still pissed because their fleet had been crushed.

A major problem for the ISA was that most people only saw the humans and didn't understand that the three human factions had completly different political positions.

The Helghasts had a terrible reputation for well known reasons, while the UNSC was also very unpopular.

The UNSC tends to ignore the Citadel law when it comes to their own matters, they normally simply take care of those who want to harm them, no matter where they are and by who their are protected.

Earth knew that it was maybe the strongest power in the known galaxy, although the Turians were only slightly weaker.

The UNSC normally didn't threaten the major power openly, but they were very good at using their cruisers for "Gunboat diplomacy", an Marathon-class cruiser which passed through an system by accident made many local leaders consider their point again.

And since there wasn't much more contact between the Citadel and Earth, except for these 'visits', most people distrusted this superpower and the fact that the UNSC Navy loved to use nuclear weapons made the situation even worse.

But now a meeting was held on Vekta, inside the VSAs headquarter, where nearly all Shadow Marshall had gatherd by Sinclairs order.

"Marshalls, I assume that you already know why we have gatherd here, the goverment has decided that we will cooperate with the Councils Specters to reduce the Helghasts influence within the Terminus.

You know what I think about this, I am no fan of aliens and cooperating with them is nothing I like, but we will have to do this, at least for now.

I want you to show both the Specters and the Black Hand who are the best and you know, always do everything to protect and strengthen the ISA." every Marshall knew what Sinclairs last words meant, sabotaging the Citadel a little while cooperating with them was nothing unsual, they had done the very same during the small period of time in which they had cooperated with the Helghast.

But fighting the Helghast was more important at the moment, other things were unimportant at the moment.

The Marshalls saluted Sinclair before they left to get ready, the only one who stayed was Kellan, who had returned from the Citadel just a few hours ago.

"I won't lecture you about Omega Lukas." the director had turned his back towards the young man, but he knew that Lukas at least smiled for a second, since he had gotten away again.

"I heard that you cooperated with a Specter during the mission, which is why I decided to make you one of the choosen Marshalls who directly cooperate with the Council. You will go back to the Citadel tomorrow." Lukas chin nearly hitted the ground as he heared his new orders, he knew what they meant.

This was his punishment, he wouldn't get any free time again and he hadn't any for the last 3 years.

"By the way, once you're on the Citadel, you can also pay the deposit for Jack, he had been there on shore-leave and broke the nose of an turian marine." Lukas sighed even more, it was always the same since Jack had joined the Raiders.

This elite-unit was known for beeing very rough at times and Jacks xenophobia had become even worse since he been a part of it.

Jack had already been in jail several times for harassing Asari merchants and only his commanders protecting hand kept him in the military, he had been fired long ago in any other unit.

"Lukas." the Marshall was already about to leave, as Sinclair adressed him again, this time with another tone in his voice, a more personal one.

"I know that you and Luger think that I try to build my own empire here on Vekta, but this isn't true, the well-beeing of our people is the only thing I care about" Kellan waited for a moment, before he sighed and replied :" I know old man." and left.

Planet Helghan, Halls of the Autarch

Hunderds of people filled this nearly sacred halls, the place where Scolar Visari had used to held his speeches and today another speech was held by an Visary, as Hera approached the Podium.

It was an ceremony to honor those who had served excellent during the short war with the Batarians and Echo was on of the them,

She had destroyed a large Blue Sun base during the conflict, stopping nearly all of their raids against the Black Hand.

Hera bit her lip as she started to talk, she needed to act like she liked all off this , otherwise she would torn apart by Stahl.

"Dear people of Helghan, today we honour these heroic soldiers, who have fought bravely against the alien menance which tried to threaten our nation.

They have risked their lives and showed great skill and bravery while faced with impossible odds, which is why they will all be honoured with the highest medal a soldier could ever get.

The Autarchs Golden Star."

she now approached the 5 soldiers who had lined up to recieve the medals and pinned them on their chest.

She stopped for a moment when she reached Echo and looked into her agents eyes, seeing disgust in them.

Echo hated this show more than anybody else, she was disgusted by the fact that she got honoured for fighting Stahls war and to stand here together with his pets.

The other soldiers seemed to love this, beeing celebrated as the great heroes of an useless war.

Maya could spot her father in the crowd, he wore a gas mask like always so his face not visible but his uniform was easy to recognize.

She knew that he hated this too, afterall he had been the one who thought her to think for herself and doubt the state propaganda.

But now she had to act nice, afterall Stahl was watching them for sure and making the old man angry at the moment was no good idea.

_Citadel, at the same time_

"This makes me sick, change the channel Garrus." the ceremony on Helghan was on every main news channel, many hoped to find any hints for what the Dominion planned to do now.

But Nihlus was sick of this, he had never liked the humans and the Helghast were even worse, so this made him sick.

"They may be assholes, but still they won the war, so lets have them their little celebration." Garrus also didn't like this, but thanks to Lukas and Kellan he at least knew that not all Helghast were like this.

"War, pfff, they had some small battles with the Batarians and now they act like they conquerd half the galaxy. In a real war we would have crushed them with no problems." Nihlus finally turned the TV of himself and decided to leave the room.

He and Garrus were in a privat lounge, only open to Specters and important polititians and currently they were the only ones there.

"Don't underestimate them, I fought the Black Hand and they are really skilled and well trained. And to be honest they have now half of the Terminus under their controll." Nihlus only grunted about Garrus comment and finally left the room, while his younger comrade stayed there.

He relaxed in his chair, this was his first free-time since the war so he relaxed and looked at the glass in his hand, an small glass, filled with 50-years old turian Brandy, one of the best in the Galaxy.

"This job has its advantages." he told himself, as a C-Sec officer he couldn't even dream about such an expensive drink and now he got anything he wanted.

He was about to drink it, but his Omni-tool interrupted him, somebody was calling him and his eyes were wide open in suprise as recognized the number.

"Lukas, why do I have the felling that you need my help again." he knew that the human would only call if he needed something, they had not talked since Omega and now the human called him privatly.

The connection was terrible, for sure because of the crappy ISA omni-tools, but you could still hear the emberrasment in the humans voice.

"Well yes. You know my little brother was on shore leave on the Citadel, got into trouble and now I have to get him out of jail. Could you help me with this my friend ?"

Garrus sighed , but a small smile crept across his face as he replied :

"Alright Lukas, I'm coming, just send me your brothers file and I'll see what I can do." Lukas sounded happy as he thanked the Turian and ended the call.

It only took a moment and file was on Garrus Omni-tools and his mandibles nearly hit the ground when he finished reading it.

"There are millions of Turians on this station, why did Kellans brother have to pick a fight with this one ?"

Chapter 6 End

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><p>Colonial Intellegience Entry # 00001234000:<p>

The Helghast War:

The Helghast War was the conflict that errupted between the Helghast Empire and the ISA over 20 years ago. It started with an massive Helghast invasion, with which they conquerd several smaller colonies within a few days.

The ISA gatherd the few ships they had builded until then to protect Vekta and were able to stop the Helghast attack on the world.

What followed were 2 years in which the ISA was able massivly increase their fleets size, until they were strong enough to counterattack.

The ISA forces had to suffer great loses while taking back the occupied worlds.

They then tried to invade Helghan, but the Helghasts lured them into an trap and heavily decimated the ISA fleet.

Shortly afterwards Stahl brought down Visari and signed the peace treaty with the ISA.

This war is also nicknamed the "Prototype War" by many older ISA officers, since nearly the whole ISA arsenal was made up of mass produced prototypes, which often fall apart during combat.

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><p>Authors Note: I kept the war very short, since its not supposed to be a major plot point, its mostly meant to explain why the Helghasts demonate the Terminus. And for those who asked how the ISA could have so much shiny tech, well lets say they had more than one source.<p> 


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